


Painted is her Occident

by eldritcher



Series: Chorale [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Family, Feminist Themes, Friendship, Love, imposter syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28369476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: In which Galadriel gets things done and gets over her imposter syndrome.
Relationships: Celeborn/Galadriel | Artanis, Fingon | Findekáno/Galadriel | Artanis, Galadriel | Artanis/Maglor | Makalaurë
Series: Chorale [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022304
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: The Song of Sunset AU





	1. Oneirology (A tale for Celeborn)

**Author's Note:**

> Fragments resorted from old drafts into questionable coherence, offered to you as a gift for making it through 2020. Well done :) 
> 
> Warnings for adult content, including references to death, rape, torture, war etc. 
> 
> First person narration from Galadriel.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celeborn wants a tale from Galadriel.

**Part I**

**Oneirology**

_A tale for Celeborn_

Middle Earth,

War of the Ring

"Tell me a story, Galadriel," Celeborn coaxed me, as he lounged about on my chaise in wondrous dishabille.

We kept separate quarters. However, at the turn of every season, he insisted on redecorating his quarters with matching themes, and then he could be persuaded to stay with me until his quarters were readied. I found his seasonal furnishings unnecessary frippery, but to each his own.

It had surprised me in the beginning when I learned that the Sindarin nobles kept separate quarters from their wives. So it had been for Elu and Melian, and their people had followed the practice as tradition. I could not fathom why men took their leave of women after intimacy, in the cold of the night's dark. Intimacy was conducted ever in the woman's bedchambers. I had to admit that I did not mind this; Celeborn had slept with most of our subjects and I dreaded the thought of going to his bed. My bed was chaste but for his occasional visits. 

Recently, clearly inspired by some romantic novel or the other he had read, he had begun to hold conversation after intimacy. 

He offered his hand to draw me to him. 

War was close. The Fellowship had set out from Imladris. My mirror called to me. While we live, let us live.

I took his hand and let him hold me as he pleased. 

"What story shall I tell you?" I asked him, determined to give him whatever he sought for the rest of my days. 

"How did you come to learn to rule? We did not teach our women," he said thoughtfully. 

Neither Arwen nor Celebrian had learned. Neither Amdir's wife nor daughter had learned. Luthien had not learned. It was not the way of their people. Once, I had strived, indefatigably, to have Celebrian taught. Then Gil-Galad had fallen and I had been drawn by the Mirror to watch over great perils. 

"Aredhel and I were taught the rudiments in Tirion," I told Celeborn.

"A story, Galadriel," he muttered. "Shall it harm you to tell me the why and the when and the how of it?"

Once, he would have cut me off abruptly, dismissing any tale of mine that referred to my family that he loathed. Leery of his scorn, I had learned to not speak of my past. As time had passed, nobody who knew me as Artanis were left on Middle Earth. 

I had become Galadriel to all. I was Celeborn's wife, who bore the name he had given her, who wore the colors of his people, who stood by him as consort. 

It was Celeborn's doing that I had lost even my name. It mattered not. He was the life left in my veins. 

"It is no tale of grace," I warned him. 

His arms came to enfold me in protection. 

"I have you," he promised. 

Even a thrall resigned to her pitiless lot finds comfort in delusion, I had learned. 

"I have you," Celeborn reiterated.

I chose to believe him.  


* * *

Valinor

Time of the Two Trees

  
"Why can't I?" 

"It is not appropriate for a princess," Mother said briskly, adjusting her bonnet as she readied for her afternoon tea. 

Afternoon tea with the socialites of Alqualondë. She had no fondness for them, but she considered it her duty to the crown, to her father, to Olwë. 

"Prince Macalaurë to see you, Princess!" One of the maids chirruped, blushing as all of them were whenever my cousin visited. I waved her off. 

"You scowl as if grievous crimes have been committed here," Macalaurë muttered, coming in hassled, as the maids took his cloak and boots. 

"Are there maids in your bedchamber too?" He asked hopelessly. 

Neither my father nor his brothers kept many attendants in Finwë's palace in Tirion. Most of us had become used to the relative freedom of acting as we pleased without scurrilous gossip spreading through the city. 

"You visited me," I told Macalaurë. "You know the road back to Tirion if you cannot put up with this."

"Anything for you, Artanis," he said charmingly, bussing a kiss to my cheek, drawing on the seductive side he must have inherited from his father. I scowled and kissed him properly.

"Serve me here," I ordered him, trying in vain to hide the anticipation from my tone. He winked at me and kneeled before me. His mouth was warm and gentle through the silk I wore. I gripped his hair, urging him on. 

He was my first lover. As he worshipped me on rug and then on chaise, before carrying me to bed, I wondered if there might be any disadvantages to marrying him at all. Father did not approve of him, calling him a rake that had stolen my precious virginity, but Mother liked him well enough. Both Olwë and Finwë would bless our union, I knew. They had been hinting obliquely over the past few years. 

The first time he had placed his mouth on me, we had both been horrified by the copiousness of my spend. It had stained my gown and his robe. He had to lend me his cloak before I could return to my chambers to change. I had been mortified. 

"I did not mean to," I had insisted, ashamed and helpless. 

"Did it please you?" He had asked, kneeling before me again, to wipe clean my thighs and cunt. I nodded, embarrassed to meet his gaze. 

"That is well," he had said soothingly. "It smells of you. Let us not fret, shall we?" 

_Squirting_ , Irissë had explained, giggling, when I had run to her. She had been envious. She had glumly confided that Tyelko had not managed to make her squirt, that he preferred to take her instead of putting his mouth on her. Macalaurë was unforgivably talented and generous in the boudoir, I had learned then. Irissë, excited that she could finally discuss intimacies with me since I had rid myself of my chastity, had told me that Tyelko did not make love to her when she bled. Macalaurë had no such compunction. He was a stickler for cleanliness and hygiene, but blood he did not mind. 

Irissë had recommended that I marry him for his tongue. I ought to give the matter consideration. 

"What has you distracted?" He asked, settling beside me. I wiped away the dampness from his face, from his excellent exertions on my behalf. His skin smelled pungent and metallic, of my need and need's culmination. 

"I asked Mother if I could learn healing," I said softly, discarding the fanciful notion of marriage. I had spent too long in Alqualondë. There was a marriage everyday in Olwë's court. "She forbade me." 

"Come home with me then?" He asked. "Nobody there will care what knowledge you seek." 

Home was Tirion, where my cousins and brothers and I had been left to our own devices. Fëanáro lived in his forge. My father lived in his theatre. Our uncle lived in the bedchamber, entertaining himself with men. And Grandfather lived to gaze upon the portrait of his first wife, in eternal mourning. 

Indis, whenever she was in residence, would try to see to our care, kind-hearted and loving as she was. 

Nolofinwë, despite his dalliances, was an excellent administrator. He had had Russandol taught to rule from a young age. With Nolofinwë's mind for the details and Russandol's skill for economic strategy, at least our city did not starve. I suspected that our court was run better than Ingwë's court or Olwë's. There were not many bureaucrats or arcane rules that dictated commerce and taxation. 

Perhaps the key to good rule was to rule less. 

On occasion, my mother would arrive in Tirion, flummoxed and vexed, and try to impart lessons of society to Irissë and I. We made sure to forget whatever we were taught by her as soon as her carriage turned the corner of our courtyard. 

"Come home?" Macalaurë urged. 

"You merely dislike staying with me here," I accused.

"I would not have hesitated to express my preferences," he commented. 

That was true. He was brutally honest. 

"You seem unhappy," he continue. "I wish to remedy it."

Ours, we often reiterated, was an arrangement of convenience. We had both been untouched. It had been expedience that had brought us to each other. Or so we had claimed often. His care to my comfort had been present, however, from the beginning. He was attuned to my moods without even speaking a word. 

I kissed him. His face was damp still. 

"Take me home," I acquiesced. 

* * *

Nolofinwë promised to find me a tutor.

"My dearest Artanis," Nolofinwë said patiently, one night at supper. "I have nothing against you learning the art of healing."

"Is it appropriate for a woman?" Grandfather asked, cautious. "There will be blood."

"I bleed every month, Grandfather!" I exclaimed. Findaráto burst into laughter. Macalaurë, equally amused, suppressed his grin casting a wary glance at Fëanáro. 

Grandfather's scandalized face was worth it. 

"Artanis, manners," Indis chided me. 

"I merely have difficulty finding you a tutor," Nolofinwë continued. "It is not done in Valinor to teach women the art of surgery." He waved his glass of wine in exasperation. "Something of Yavanna's philosophy, of how Eru created women to nurture instead of harm." 

The passive and the active, Yavanna held. It was our place to receive, to love, nurture. It was the place of men to give, to provide, to seed. I scowled at the unfairness of their nonsensical laws. 

Irissë was a better hunter than any of our cousins or brothers, even if hunting was an activity for men, according to Orome. 

"Lord Irmo is seeking students," my father said thoughtfully. "He has traditionally not cared to bar women from seeking tutelage. Did he not teach Melyanna? Did he not teach Míriel?" 

"Lórien is too far," Russandol cut in. "I can find someone in Tirion." 

I was surprised by his assertion. He rarely interfered in matters that did not concern him. 

"She rides from Alqualondë to Tirion alone," Indis said mildly. "There are plenty of my kinsmen in Lórien, Maitimo. Let her learn from Lord Irmo." 

* * *

Findaráto accompanied me to Lórien. He chattered the entire journey about his many complicated plans to propose marriage to Amarië. 

"Does she even wish to marry you?" I asked him, exasperated. 

"Why wouldn't she?" He asked, genuinely surprised by the question. 

"Meet, love, marry, birth, be unhappy. Is that not what our father and his brothers did? Is that not what Finwë and Indis did?" I asked. "What assurance is marriage of happiness?" 

"Fëanáro and Nerdanel had a good run of it," Findaráto opined. "Nolofinwë and Father married for alliances, not for love. Grandfather married so that his son might have a mother. Amarie will be marrying me because she is madly, completely, blisteringly in love with me."

Blisteringly in love? Whatever did that mean? 

"I don't like her," I muttered. 

"Amarië is the sweetest daffodil of Alqualondë!"

"Alqualondë is a low-lying saline plain. There are no daffodils that grow in that terrain." 

"Oh, Artanis!" He sighed. "And here I thought Macalaurë had unearthed the romantic in you."

"Macalaurë is an excellent lover. That is all."

"I see," he said, winking, insinuations bright in the curl of his mouth as he grinned. 

"Irissë and I swore a pact not to marry," I confided in him. "We shall take many lovers and be as replete as Nolofinwë." 

"Artanis, you cannot stand most of Tirion. You call them witless dullards bumbling about slurping port wine and hogging about burdened chaises covered in ermine." 

"Maybe the next generation will be more tolerable," I hoped. 

* * *

Irmo, Lord of Lórien, generously welcomed me to his abode. His consort, Estë, remained quiet by his side, neither smiling nor speaking. 

I curtseyed to them. In their presence, alone, I wished that Findaráto had stayed. He had returned home, bidding me to write. I had not been alone anywhere before. Abruptly, I remembered Russandol's concern about how Lórien was too far. 

"You came to learn the art of healing."

"Yes, milord." 

"Laurelin's beams are caught in your hair."

"Milord?" I asked, puzzled by his words. The only Vala I had interacted with was Aulë, who came often to Fëanáro's forge. 

The Lord of Lórien came to me, and placed his warm hand on my head, and under his touch, my braids fell away to leave my hair loose. Dreams spilled from his fingers, golden, and they cosseted me, honey-thick in their embrace. I did not understand how anyone could leave him voluntarily.

"What a sweet girl," he remarked, stepping away. 

Nobody had called me sweet before. I felt discomfited by his warm gaze and his generous touch. The ways of the Valar were mysterious. 

"I shall be delighted to teach you, Artanis." 

A guard returned me to the gardens, where there were many maidens singing and dancing, as merry as nightingales. Whenever I asked them questions of what Irmo taught them, they professed ignorance and ran away from me.   
  
At the mingling of the lights, Irmo came to me. He led me to a wounded deer and taught me to splint and suture. His hands were heavy upon my shoulders and his warm voice guided me gently. 

The beast died, thrashing, in pain. I was crying, but my tears fell golden upon its downy coat. 

"What did I do wrong, milord?" I asked, horrified. 

"Nothing," he comforted me, his hands coming to my waist. Macalaurë held me so often, but never as strongly as the Lord of Lórien did then. 

"A healer must know when to offer mercy's kiss," Irmo taught me, before leading me to another dying deer. He drew me closer still and held my trembling wrists as he tutored. 

My gown, washed in the silver of Tyelperion's light, was drenched in blood. 

"Sleep well, Artanis. I shall see you tomorrow for our next lesson," he promised, and kissed my cheek. 

* * *

I searched and searched for the stables in vain. I searched and searched for a way out of the labyrinthian gardens in vain. I searched for the maidens that had danced carefree in vain. Finally, exhausted, I fell asleep by a fountain. In my sleep, the Lord of Lórien wrapped me in dreams golden and suffocating, and I thrashed, frightened, as the dying deer had. 

"Artanis! Artanis!" 

I sobbed, falling into Russandol's arms, frightened and witless. 

"It is all right," he promised, holding me, caressing my hair into a semblance of order, wiping away my tears. 

There was something warm about my neck. I looked down and screamed again, only for Russandol to cup my mouth closed. 

"Quiet," he ordered, tone sharp in a way I had not heard before. In this land of dreams, of a God's make, only he remained real, and the bright of his eyes glimmered lucid amidst shifting light and earth. 

He said nothing when I tore away the garland of blue hyacinths about my neck. The flowers fell at the base of the fountain, and I noticed the runes dazzling in the silver light, speaking of a Broideress. 

"This is where she came to die," he said softly. 

"I don't want to-" I swallowed, terrified, clutching his hands. "Cousin, I cannot find the stables. I cannot find the gates. I cannot-" 

"Hush," he insisted, quelling my garbled words. 

I let him tug me up. He gathered me close and we walked through the dim silver, on shifting paths where dreams lay warm as treacle. I fell frequently, to the soft grassy earth, into the vortex of hallucinations, but he managed to hold course, to steer us away until we stood on a dusty road where his mare waited for us. 

* * *

"Heal her," he told Yavanna, pacing restlessly before her hearth. 

"Seek Nienna or Irmo," Yavanna replied. "It is not my dominion."

"I brought her from Lórien," Russandol said tersely. 

"Irmo shall be furious," Yavanna said. "You stole his student from his house." 

"I was not stolen," I piped up, from where I was bundled in Russandol's cloak. I could not cease shivering. And my mind slipped from dream to dream restless. 

"I trust Irmo's word over yours, child," Yavanna replied. 

"I shall see to amends with Irmo," Russandol said. "If you see to her now, I can bring her home, and be on my way to Irmo." 

* * *

"They shan't be as vaunted in their wisdom as the Valar," Russandol cautioned me, as he proffered me the list of healers he had gathered. 

Many of them I recognized as having been Nolofinwë's lovers, or Findekáno's. They stood to lose should they harm me. 

"I think I have had enough of the Valar," I said, rubbing my cheek where I still felt the unnatural warmth of Irmo's fingers. 

"A few days," he said gently, taking my hand away from my face. "It is in the past now, Artanis. Rest awhile. Shall I summon Macalaurë? Shall I send for your father?"

"They shan't believe me," I said bleakly. 

"You are healed from the sedation of dreams. You are home. Let the rest be."

"You have seen this before," I said then, realizing why he knew Irmo's ways, why Yavanna and he spoke so bluntly of making amends with Irmo. It must have happened before. He had intervened before. 

Who-

Irmo loved music. Macalaurë would have told me if he had had dealings with the Lord of Lórien before. None of the others had anything of interest to Irmo. Who had been caught before? I scrutinized Russandol. 

"Try not to worry," he insisted. "I am always careful."

He was careful. Was it enough? I remembered the garland of hyacinths that had wrapped me in dreams, until I sought reverie upon the blood-burdened earth where Míriel had died. 

Sweet girl, Irmo had called me, before branding me with dreams, before placing me in a bier garlanded in dreams cloying and thick.

"Tell me. I wish to help," I commanded, angry, vengeful, bitter. 

"Healing shall suit you, I say," Russandol said brightly, and turned away. 

"Tell me!" I ordered, frightened for us. What could he do? What could any of us do? We needed to warn Grandfather. We needed to-

"It is not your cause, Artanis," he said bluntly. 

"Chivalry does not suit you. You seek to protect me because I am a woman," I accused him.

"I seek to protect you because you are family." 

I was terrified, for I feared what he might mean to do, and I feared what Irmo would do to him. Bloodwarm, Irmo's hands about me had snared me as a rat in the kitchen snares. 

"I wish to help," I said grimly, and if my voice trembled neither of us made note of it.

"You must learn to rule before you learn of war," Russandol said softly. 

War. 

I swallowed at the import of his words. His gaze was steady as I sat down on the chaise with my legs turning limp from shock. The bright silver of his eyes were the only lucid thing I knew, my senses flinching still at fragrance and breeze and sound. How many times had he walked those ensorcelled gardens? He had known where to find me. He had known how to mend me. 

"So be it, cousin. I shall learn to rule," I promised. 

* * *

Middle Earth

War of the Ring

"That is the tale of how I came to learn matters of rule and realm," I told Celeborn.

"Tell me that I am a better lover than your craven cousin!" he said, putting on fake pomposity to cheer me up. 

"There is no comparison," I reassured him, laughing. "I married you."

He grinned and returned to his contemplation of my tale, quiet and pensive. 

"You must have been very young." 

Ereinion had been young when the crown had come to him. The Ringbearer, halfling, brave and steadfast, was a lad. 

Russandol had been a child when he had begun his war. 

"You are the greatest ruler our people have known," Celeborn continued. 

I had ruled for the first time in Barad Eithel, when Nolofinwë had been indisposed after Irissë's disappearance. It had not fared well. I had been overwhelmed by the details of daily rule in that chaotic era: emissaries, building, foraging, commerce, hunting parties, patrols, training warriors, distribution from the granaries, harvest, fisheries. When Russandol had arrived, I had gladly handed over my duties. As Nolofinwë, he had been frightfully effective in restoring order. 

I had ruled for the second time in Doriath, when Melian and Elu had been grieving for Luthien. I had fared better, for it was a small and experienced court that required little decision making, given the isolation and routine that pervaded. I had come to find ruling a vocation.

After Melian's departure, after Elu's death, Dior had not sought my counsel. 

I had ruled in Lindon, in Ereinion's stead. He had been inexperienced, so he had let me administer as I knew best. Then, once Elrond and Erestor had risen in his Council, I had retreated to Lothlórien. 

Amdir, and then Amroth, and then Celeborn had all been glad to leave the kingdom's administration in my hands. By then, I had become well-versed in running a realm that was relatively isolated from the rest of Middle Earth.

I excelled when I did not have to pay mind to a hundred matters of disparate make. My manner of rule would not serve a sprawling and sparsely populated kingdom as Gondor or Rohan. Fortunately my husband's people were not given to sprawl. 

"If you were not here," Celeborn continued. "If you were not here to rule, our people would have fallen to starvation and poverty long ago. I feared when Dior came to the throne, untaught as he had been in rule. I thought all over when Dior fell." He sighed. "I feared when Amdir brought us here. I was gladdened when you joined us, when you began to rule our people. Ironic, is it not? I did not see in women rulers, unless they were of another make, as Melian had been. Then I saw you rule our realm, outcast to our people, and we knew only safety and plenty." 

"Our people?"

"Our people," he said firmly. "You have ruled them and seen to their welfare for millennia, Galadriel. They are your people too."

Our people loathed me. I decided to not raise that grim truth, not when Celeborn was of the mind to flatter. 

"I did not tend to this realm for the sake of the people," I told him. 

Once, I would have hidden the truth from him. I had run out of time. Let him do as he pleased with my truths. 

"I know it was for me," he said quietly. 

"My Lord!" It was Haldir. Celeborn kissed me before seeing to his attire swiftly and making for the door. 

"Shall you come?" He asked me. 

I knew the borders of his forest better than he did. The Fellowship had come, and they mourned. I accompanied him quietly. 

"The time has come for bitter things," Estel declared, standing before us bedraggled and brave, his hand protective on the Ring Bearer's shoulder. "Gandalf is dead."

The time for bitter things had come long ago, in the silver-washed gardens of dreams where I had been garlanded by hyacinths, upon the blood-burdened earth that had drunken of Míriel's blood. 

"You are safe," Celeborn promised the Fellowship. "You are under the protection of Lothlórien."

Lothlórien. Lórien chased my footsteps through time, and I meant to heed my fate without fear. 

"If they came, their numbers outstrip yours," Boromir of Gondor said tiredly, disbelieving.

What need of an army had Celeborn, when I held the forest?

* * *

"A witch!" Gimli insisted, sobriety lost to ale as he mourned Gandalf. 

"Lady Galadriel is no witch," Estel and Laiqua told him fiercely, casting me wary glances as if I might suddenly take offense. Celeborn's people called me kinslayer.

Amused, I waved my hand, and a wreath of laurel came to encircle Gimli's noble brow; it was a parlor trick that Gandalf had taught me to cheer me up once when Celeborn had bedded yet another soldier after renewing his promise of fidelity to me. _Crowned laureate_ , Gandalf had teased me. _What need have you for husbands now?_

"I have seen that you shall slay the most orcs in this war," I told Gimli, entertained by his puffing pride, and by the exasperated grumblings from Laiqua and Estel. 

"She is frequently wrong," Laiqua sulked. 

"Let us keep count of our kills!" Gimli said cheerfully. "I believe our Lady of The Wood. None wiser than her, they say."

* * *

"You are not in mourning," Celeborn said, when he came to me afterwards, heavy-hearted and frowning. 

The staff Gandalf had held was crowned by the flame of Anor. His end, whatever it may be, was not in Moria. 

I could not see further. I could not see the why or the when. 

I kept faith. 

"I shall hope too, then," Celeborn vowed, seeing what I held to. "I spread my dreams at your feet, Galadriel. Today, let us see to our people, you and I."

We ruled together, on war's eve.

* * *


	2. All that we see or seem (A Tale for Gandalf)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gandalf asks Galadriel for a story.

**Part II**

**All that we see or seem**

_A tale for Gandalf_

Gondor,

The Fourth Age.

  
Estel and Arwen married under laurel and hyacinths. Celeborn held me and kissed me, unusually happy that day as he watched them wed and vow to each other promises of fidelity and care.  
  
In the White City, Gandalf led Elrond and I to the Halls of Healing, where lay recovering still Faramir of Gondor, Meriadoc of the Shire, and Éowyn of the Mark.   
  
"Estel did his best. As did I," Gandalf said, scowling, displeased. "It is foul sorcery that we could not rid in entirety. I decided to wait for you before attempting anything further."

He was no healer. Incanus, he had been called, for his mastery of minds. 

Estel, at least, knew his way about herbs that mended and had an instinctive understanding of healing, inherited from the line of Melian. 

Elrond was the true healer among us. To Elrond had come the Blue Ring, Vilya, the Ring that Healed, after Ereinion's fall in Mordor. It had surprised none when the power settled in ease in his realm, in a way it had not in Lindon when Ereinion bore the ring. Elrond had been trained by the court healers that had once taught me in Tirion, who had followed us east, first to Nolofinwë's court and then after his death to Russandol's. My cousin had inherited most of the Noldor court after Findekáno became King, after our courtiers had found him inept and uninspiring. Russandol, despite his significant vices and faults, had known to rule. 

Before the Army of the West had arrived, the healers had been sent to Ereinion. Most of them had perished in the war, and then many had fallen in Mordor. The rest, scattered, had found haven in Círdan's court or in Imladris. In the past decades, those that survived had returned to Valinor, to my father's court in Tirion. 

Meriadoc was a fragile lad, and his tale of bravery left me in awe.

"Have of me," I offered, inspired by this halfling that had fought and won battles that had belonged to others. "What may I gift you?" 

"A lock of your hair, milady!" He exclaimed, overwhelmed and excited. "Pippin will be jealous! All of the Shire will be jealous!" 

The Shire. I feared his battles were not over. The Mirror had shown me Saruman. 

"A lock of my hair you shall have," I promised him, and knelt before him so that we were level. 

Gandalf grumbled, pleased and frustrated in equal measure, and helped Meriadoc select and clip a lock of my hair for him.

"It shines brighter than sunlight!" Meriadoc exclaimed, astonished. Gandalf gave him a locket to place it safely in. 

Irmo had said that the light of Laurelin had been caught in my locks once. That had been a long time ago. Aged by grief and duty, my hair bore no resemblance to what it had once been. 

"Stop seducing Dwarves and Hobbits," Elrond muttered, never too pleased to be in my company. I could not bring myself to resent him in kind. He was Macalaurë's. 

We worked together, despite our long and bitter history. He healed the body and I the mind. 

"There are still shadows," Éowyn whispered. "Will they linger long?"

Yavanna had healed me once, and I knew still the imprint of Irmo's sorcery upon my soul. This child of Théoden's, so beloved to him, I had done my best to cure, but healing was not undoing of the harm. She had boldly stood between Théoden and the King of Angmar. The stain on her would remain. 

Then, clever as she was said to be, Éowyn asked, "Are they real? Are they merely my mind's games?" 

"Merely dreams," Elrond promised. "Sleep with a sprig of Athelas under your pillow, Lady Éowyn, and all shall be well."

So Elrond was culpable for Estel's obsession with the Athelas plant. He raised his eyebrows at my skeptical glance. I said nothing. He excelled at holding grudges and sulking. Truly Macalaurë 's child. 

* * *

There was merry-making everywhere, on the plains, on the terraces, in the King's halls. The Ringbearer, alone, stood on his balcony, burdened by victory as he had once been by the Ring. Not alone, I realized. Samwise, loyal, was ushering him back inside. 

Gandalf joined me in the courtyard where stood the gnarled White Tree of Gondor. "Denethor was trying to burn his son alive here," he told me. "He also tried to burn himself alive here. It was very theatrical. Arafinwë would have approved."

"My father was a patron of comedies and romances that ended well, Gandalf." 

"He became a patron of tragedies and epic adventures after he returned," Gandalf replied. "It was as if he had returned from a pilgrimage with new faith found." 

I missed my father so, everyday. Cowards deserve nothing, I reminded myself. Our rift was not of his making. 

"Tell me a story, Galadriel," Gandalf asked. 

"Think you deserve a story from me, gnarly wizard?" I teased him. 

"I am your knight who returned to you on eagle's back," he remonstrated, glaring, playful. 

Findekáno had returned to us on an eagle's back, with a bloodied harp, shell-shocked and terrified, as he brought home a mass of flesh and bones. Thorondor's wingspan I had not seen on another before or after. And yet how gently and carefully had he borne his burden to us. 

Gandalf had returned to us, resurrected, on eagle's back, and the power of his staff had blazed bright through his skin and bones. He wore Narya, the Ring of Fire, openly on his hand afterwards, refusing to conceal what he was.

The ruby on his Ring of Fire, crimson, had been found by Telpë in the burning tunnels of the oldest of Beleriand's mines before the land had sunken. It had matched the bleeding sun when Manwë had sundered Arda. It had been the carmine of Russandol's hair when I had seen him last, as he readied gracefully for death. 

The Rings that my nephew had made in Eregion were bonded by his love of our family, so that they may not turn to evil. I had been surprised when this Ring of Fire had settled for Círdan. I had expected it to come to one in our family. Then again, I had mused, Círdan was _family_ , given how long and faithfully he had succored us. 

Círdan had passed it to Gandalf, when the wizard had come to Middle Earth. I had been surprised. There had been potent protections that Telpë had placed to avoid the Ring falling into the hands of a Maia, fearful as he had been of Sauron. And yet, to one of the Maiar it had come, to one disgruntled and content to wander away from the corridors of power, to one that liked pipeweed and Shirelings. 

"The Three Rings," I told Gandalf. "Telpë, my nephew, or Celebrimbor as they know him in lore, had clear intent for each, inspired as he had been by three tales of our people."

Gandalf proffered me pipeweed. Celeborn was with the warriors in the barracks, feasting, along with Elrohir and Elladan. I winked at Gandalf and accepted his foul pipe. 

We settled comfortably at the base of the White Tree of Gondor, and he wrapped his rough cloak about me, even if the night was balmy from the many fires that burned East still. Estel and Laiqua would have their work cut out for them in the coming years. 

"You know to smoke," Gandalf said, admiring. 

"Stop flirting," I told him, not minding at all. "We would hunt for months together, my brothers and my cousins and I, and we were fond of smoking about our bonfire on cold nights." 

I was fairly certain that Findaráto had discovered the leaves first. He had an interminable curiosity when it came to flowers and leaves he did not know, avid botanist that had been. Fortunately, he had been in the practice of carrying bezoars with him on his adventures. 

I laughed when I managed to blow a circle of smoke. Gandalf, showoff that he was, cut through it with an eagle. 

"I await your tale, Lady Galadriel." 

* * *

Eregion, 

The Second Age

"Telpë, you cannot pine to death in the forge!" I insisted, trying to force him from the desk where he sat with his face in his hands, so that he might partake of sustenance and sleep. 

"You have a court that awaits you. The guild awaits you. We need to send word to Ereinion of the secrets Annatar has claimed. We need to send word to our allies, to Narvi's people!"

"If I knew to rule, Artanis, I would not be in this predicament," he said grimly. 

He did not know to rule. He did not know how to accomplish anything outside the forge. I hoped his folly would not return to doom us. 

"You and I have faced mightier fates," I reassured him. "Together." 

There would be time to worry later. I needed him to show his face in his court. I needed him to sign and seal his letters so that I may send them out. 

"He saw this," Telpë said, voice as brittle as fine-spun glass. "Guild and Gifts, Ring and Power, Unto Caldera."

The words woke fear in me, but I knew better than to succumb. I was Artanis. With fear came dreams, I knew. 

"He raved so," I said gently. "He predicted the mating of rabbits and quicksand in some moor somewhere both. You cannot ascribe meaning to his raving."

The mirror of Melian showed me what could be. My dead cousin's soothsaying was a beast of another nature; the less I thought of it, the better. 

With coaxing words, I ushered him away from the forge, and urged him to eat and bathe, and then to sleep. When he woke, I pestered him to read his correspondence and to send out the riders to his allies and to our King.

"How long can you stay?" He asked me glumly. 

Celeborn would not be pleased if I lingered with my nephew. I sighed. 

"It is all right," Telpë said hastily, seeing the conflict I contended with. "Come to the forge with me. I have an idea. I wanted to see what you thought of it." 

Hadn't he had enough ideas to cause us a lifetime's grief? I scowled at him, but accompanied him nevertheless. 

I settled in beside him on the oaken bench, as he walked me through calculations on parchment, as he gesticulated excitedly explaining how metal and gem could coalesce to power. 

"What if Annatar returns for them?" I said worried. "Or another? Where power is, war follows, Telpë."

"This shan't be so," he promised me. "These Rings, Three, shall be bonded by my love for our family. None that do not bear our blood can waken the power of these rings."

Lomion, Maeglin as they called him, had been of our blood too. I hoped, for our sakes, that Telpë's ploy worked. We had nothing else to combat the power that Annatar had crafted. Ereinion was a King that did not hold with sorcery, imagining that it had died with Arda, with the War of the Powers. 

"Three Rings, you say."

"There must be three," he said confidently, looking over his calculations once again, lost in thought. 

I placed my head on his shoulder and examined his scribbling. 

"One of Water." 

"Nenya," he named. He turned to press a kiss to my cheek. "Do you remember the diamond that Grandfather found in Olwë's mines? It came to me." His hand came to cover mine. "Adamant. The one that protects. The one that does not falter. The one that shall prevail. You stood on the Great Ice, streaked in blood and smoke, unfaltering, holding together our people, exhorting us onwards, until we made land."

I could not have done anything else. Findekáno and I had been the only ones lucid and healthy. Turkáno had been grieving for his wife. Nolofinwë had been more corpse than man when he had seen the ships burning. Findaráto had been wounded at Alqualondë. 

So Findekáno and I had held our people to us, he leading and I healing, and we had brought the exodus to the lands we came to conquer. No conquest awaited us there, but Morgoth's army did. Findekáno had staged a valiant defense, and I had steadied our people from fleeing scattered into a stampede. Carnistro had managed to come to our aid, with his army. 

"Artanis, my adamant child," Nolofinwë had said afterwards, when I tended to his wounds. The pride and love in his voice had left me shaken. 

"One of Air," I read Telpë's notes. 

"Vilya," he named. 

His laughter was a torn, weary thing. We were all that were left of the exiles that had dared the Gods. 

"For what heals, for what mends, for what inspires," Telpë stated. "The sapphire was prospected by my father in the caves of Nargothrond. An untainted sapphire, without impurities that asteriated it. The striking black-blue of it reminds me of Macalaurë ." 

What heals, what mends, what inspires. Macalaurë's heart, pure and unwavering, had been the only salve a dying man had clung to. After Nolofinwë's death, Macalaurë had been the sole reason why our family was knit together, with his persevering correspondence as he wrote to all of us, mending our fabric, for his brother's sake. Antidotes were poisons that turned in nature, from venom to balm. So had been Macalaurë, as he changed himself to what his brother needed of him, setting aside himself, setting aside ambition and fear, resolving purely into faith's substance. 

In spells of desolation, I had often rued my existence. What had made Macalaurë deserving of his brother's love? Oh, while Russandol had lived, all of us had castigated him for his secrets and vices, and called him unworthy of Macalaurë's constancy. The substance of his love was the substance of which worlds were made and I knew not what had made Macalaurë worthy.

I knew not what had made me deserving of only my husband's temperamental passion. He returned to me, always, but he strayed night to night. His infidelities were blamed on my coldness. They called me frigid and they called him noble. Even my own blood, Ereinion and Elrond, had more compassion for my husband than for me.

Celeborn loathed my family, and he loathed me too in the times I loved and mourned them. 

What had made me deserving of this? I craved constancy. Oh, how I craved constancy. Instead, I watched my husband settle for me on occasion, and wished that I was enough.

Macalaurë had been. Irissë had been. Every single one of my brothers and cousins had been deeply loved, even if love had ruined them in the end. Was I the only one unworthy? 

"Artanis?" Telpë asked gently. 

"I agree," I replied, terse. To change the subject, I turned to the third of his Rings. 

"One of Fire," I remarked. 

"The ruby I found in the tunnels of the collapsed mines in Beleriand, when we were returning from war," Telpë said quietly. "It bled true the colors of the sunset that evening. One as hued pure as this ruby, I had not seen before." 

"You should name this one," he told me. 

"Narya," I said thickly, and he wiped away my tears. "Let it kindle hope. May it call us to defiance in the face of tyranny, no matter the odds. May it offer solace in despair. May it show us resilience in defeat. May it, evermore, teach us how to meet the inevitable with grace." 

Let it remind us of faith.

Neither he nor I said a word more.   


* * *

Gondor, 

The Fourth Age

"Thus came the Three Rings to be," I told Gandalf, as we traded the pipe peaceably. 

"I know that your ring is wrought of mithril," Gandalf said thoughtfully. "And Elrond's is shaped of gold." 

"Gold was Macalaurë 's voice raised in song," I reminisced. "Mithril, because, as adamant, it was stronger than steel." 

"What manner of metal is Narya set upon?" Gandalf asked me, frowning at the mystery, knowing that I had evaded the answer. I laughed at his scowl. 

"Have you seen it before?" I teased him. 

"No," he said, glowering at me for how I coyly led him on. "Tell me, Galadriel!" 

"You did not ask who Telpë's muse was, when he wrought Narya," I reminded him. 

He grumbled something about pesky woodwitches. Then he muttered, "Fëanáro, surely? Fire. Who but him could merit the description?" 

I caught his hand in mine and we looked at the ring together. 

"By the Cuivenien, when the Eldar woke first, there were many metals and gems in the rocks that surrounded them. Grandfather prospected to bring metals to make tools and instruments, to bring jewels to adorn his wife. He came across the corpse of a creature of the primordial once; it must have fallen into Eru's creation as Ungoliant had, only to be slaughtered by one of the Valar as they sought to protect us. He cut through the corpse, with hand and knife, until he found its heart. Cold as starfire it was, bearing not blood's warmth that ran in Eru's creations. When Fëanáro came of age, Finwë gave the strange substance to him. When Telpë came of age, Fëanáro, in turn, gave his inheritance to the only scion of his bloodline who had shared his interests in the forge." 

"I wondered why the Ring of Fire came to you, why its power exceeds that of the others," I ruminated. "Then you came to me, resurrected, on an eagle's back, bearing aloft your staff." 

"The flame of Anor works in mysterious ways," he said gruffly, wishing me to cease speculation.  
  
"It may," I allowed. "The staff you bear is not purely of Eru's make, Gandalf. How curious then that a Ring made of the heart of a primordial beast and of Beleriand's blood came to you." 

He said nothing. 

"My nephew had placed potent protections to keep the Rings from waking to power in the hands of a Wizard," I continued. 

"Gandalf the Grey," I stated his name that Middle Earth knew him by. "My cousin was fond of the names that means the best. An Elf with a Wand: Gandalf, as Middle Earth named you. One closer to my kind than to yours, according to my perceptive husband. Grey your robes and cloak, as you wandered a pilgrim through these lands, head bowed in grim mourning."

"Lady Nienna taught me," Gandalf said irritably, unwilling to yield his secrets even then. "Her dominion is over mourning and sorrow, as you know." 

"You wear the ring openly now. You know what the Valar would make of it, when you bear it to Valinor." 

"My battle is not with the Gods. I came to aid you against Sauron," he muttered, terrible at lying as he had ever been over our acquaintance. 

"All that we see or seem," I remarked. "You, my friend, woke the Ring of Fire to power, despite the protections against your kind, despite that you share not our blood."

"So you came to the witless conclusion then that I am closer to your kind than mine, that I am family by some sorcery," he said, laughing. 

"You are a poor liar," I said, puffing through his smoke-shape of oval an asterism. 

He harrumphed, but said nothing, valorous and well-meaning in his silence. 

"He wouldn't have minded, if you told me," I whispered, looking to where Earendil sailed the skies. "At the end, when I saw him, he resembled one of your kind than one of mine."

I wanted to be trusted by Gandalf, who had fought my war for me. I wanted to trust him, as I readied to sail west. I wanted to be worthy. Did I deserve this? I did not know. 

"Red falls the dew on these silver leaves," Gandalf said quietly. "Creatures of Clay, he and I, and we had transmuted each into the other." 

_Look to the west when all is dire, when hope has died, for he will come to you bearing fire, neither early nor late._ Gandalf had come to me as I lay dying after what had happened on Gladden Fields. I had lived, breathing of new hope. He had become the knight to a woman enthralled by her mirror. 

"Pilgrim, widower, wanderer, warrior, wiseman, _valiant_ ," I named him; his hand trembled over mine, as I saw him. 

The rings we bore were faded and dying power. They were adamant encircled by hope.

My heart sang, relieved of loneliness. 

"He would chase me about," Gandalf said in a low voice, tone reverent and wistful. "He demanded stories every night. _Have a song instead_ , I would tell the little idiot. _A story, please, Olórin. One of adventure and valor and cleverness that defies the odds!_ Ah, what he wouldn't have given to hear the tale of Bilbo Baggins, Burglar Extraordinaire."

"You could have wooed him with the tale of the Lonely Mountain. Dragons, Dwarves, and Derring-do," I whispered, thinking of that cousin of mine, who had given me war and faith. 

"Don't forget the eagles," Gandalf grumbled, displeased and pleased all the same. 

"He would have taken Master Baggins' side in every argument," I said, helpless but to grin at the silly thought. 

"Riddles and prophecies. Burglars!" Gandalf laughed, and stole the pipe back from me. 

"Well then, old friend," I said brightly. 

"Wars we have won before, together," he said, serene for the first time in our acquaintance. "What is one more?" 

* * *


	3. As wine through water (A Tale for Thranduil)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thranduil wants a tale from Galadriel.

**Part III**

**As wine through water**

_A tale for Thranduil_

On a ship to Valinor,

The Fourth Age

  
The seaspray reminded me of my grandfather's fishing boats in the waters of Alqualondë. 

"Tell me a story," Thranduil pestered me. 

They had begun to follow me around, worried for my health, after I had fainted a few times. By silent consensus, they had begun to take turns to ensure I was never unaccompanied.

Did they think an eagle would swoop and steal me away? Did they think that I would leap into the seas as feckless as Pharazon's sailors had once been? Dreams rose in me, and I charted a course upon their roiling tide as Círdan steered our ship to Valinor. Neither sword nor sorcery could aid me now. 

"You were there in nearly every good story I lived," I told Thranduil truthfully. 

"This newfound sincerity of yours is most vexing!" he complained. He was fearful, I saw. For me to bare my truths, what must have occurred? 

"What have you seen?" He asked, worried. 

"I have no mirror," I said, dissuading him from his concern. 

We stood at the prow, together and tired and girding ourselves for another battle. 

"Tell me the story of how the mirror came to you," he asked softly. "If you are of the mind to be uncharacteristically open, let me hear of the greatest of Galadriel's mysteries."

The sword at his waist had been made by my nephew in Eregion. The jewel set upon it was an emerald from Fëanáro's legacy. There would soon be ichor upon its blade, I saw. 

"It is no tale of bliss," I warned Thranduil.

"I shall love you nevertheless," he said cheerfully, eliciting a smile from me for his boundless charm and care. Elerrína's grandson, and her blood ran in him true. 

* * *

Doriath,

The First Age 

"The young have dreams. The old have visions," I said lightly, when Melian showed me her mirror. 

"I bequeath it to you, Galadriel," she said calmly, reacting not a whit to my words, showing no emotion when I gasped in shock. 

Melian was the personification of calm poise. 

"My bloodline is weakened," she continued dispassionately. "Foresight does not hold course in my descendants. The mirror will not wake to them." 

"Why are you confident that it shall wake to me?" 

"The Lord of Lórien has picked his students with care, always, and those he chose carry in them impressions of his power. I heard that you were sought after by him once." 

He had taught her, and she had left Valinor afterwards. 

"The dreams of our sleep, unguarded as they walk through our minds, leave an impression, afterwards. Dreams, visions, they come from the same source, from the Lord of Lórien. And his power has touched you."

Yavanna had healed me to the best of her ability. And yet Irmo's mark on me remained. Melian's foresight and mine had come from the same source. In the gardens of Lórien, Míriel had lain down to die, sung to last breath by Irmo, and prophecies had spilled as blood from her lips. 

"How did foresight come to the Valar? Do all of them possess it? Was it one of Eru's gifts to them? Is it writ in the Song?" I asked softly. 

Melian shook her head, unable to offer me answers. Her mirror woke to me and the cloying honey-warm music of it returned me to the labyrinths of Lórien, where I wandered to pluck portents hidden as hyacinths amid silver-washed trees that bled. 

* * *

In Belfalas, I nursed my cousin to health from the latest of his scrapes. 

"I have become inordinately talented at stitching you to form," I complained. 

Him I had healed, again and again, dragging him from Mandos willfully. _Artanis is the only healer I shall have_ , he had declared, when he had regained a semblance of lucidity after his sojourn in Angband. The experienced and learned healers had been relegated to the sidelines, and only I had tended to him with poultice and potion afterwards. 

"My maker," Russandol said brightly, clinging to death's edge as he had from the first time he had crossed the Gods. Then his eyes sharpened, despite the excellent opiates I kept him in, and his hand came to cup my chin. 

"What have you been meddling in?" He asked quietly. "Dreams walk in your blood."

"Visions," I replied, sitting beside him, leaving clear inches between us.

If he were Macalaurë or Telpë, I would have rested my head upon his shoulder, but he loathed tactility initiated by another. Whenever I had pulled him back from death's precipice, I wanted to be held by him, to convince myself that I had succeeded. The first time I had carelessly sought this reassurance, he had panicked and fallen off the cot in a tangle of sheets and limbs and nearly bled out. I had learned to curtail my impulse in its wake. 

"Melyanna's mirror came to me."

"Careful, Artanis," he warned me. "You shan't be the first to dream of the wondrous, only to find yourself chained to sorrow." 

"Melyanna used it to protect her people," I said quietly, resolute. "I promised you once that I would help. Learn to rule before you learn of war, you said. I have learned to rule."

I was frightened each time his health faltered, each time my healing weakened in its mediation. I was not ready. I would never be ready. 

I would not suffice, I knew. 

He had no other choice. 

"There is time," he promised, seeing what terrified me. Sighing, he opened his arm in embrace, and pressed an exasperated kiss to my cheek when I hastened to cling to him. 

"Leech," he accused me.

"I know to exploit your rare experiments in platonic tactility to the utmost," I retorted.

I hated how easily he read me. I could not complain right then, when it had won me an exception to his usual standoffishness. He smelled of mandragora and petrichor, as he had ever since Angband. Comforted, I pressed my face to his breast and closed my eyes. 

"How did you come by your foresight? Melyanna said that it came to those who bear it by Irmo's grace."

"The entrails of orcs eaten under a full moon at the confluence of the waters," he told me cheerfully, deceitful in all things. 

He did not trust me. And yet he demanded that I trust him. I trusted him. I badly wanted to show him that I was enough, that I deserved his trust, that I could be what he needed me to be. The constancy in love I craved was not fated for me, even if it had been for every one of my brothers and cousins. Let me at least have this, I prayed. Let me at least be hewn of purpose and found worthy. 

"Artanis?"

"I shall have your secrets one day," I threatened him. 

"Irmo's gifts shall unmoor you, from reality to liminality," he said then, turning solemn once more. "You must learn to anchor your mind, if you choose to embark on this path."

The opiates that I had once gathered for him would come to be my solace. 

"Is it inherited?" I asked him quietly, thinking of Melian's words once more.

"Only if you inherit fear and necessity," he said sleepily, caressing my hair. "Melyanna fled east, frightened, in need of shelter. She had every reason to wake her power, regardless of the tragedies that had brought it to her."

"What draws Irmo?"

"Oh, this and that." 

"Russandol, answer my question or I shall leave you in the care of your healers."

"Cruel threats from a lady." 

"Cousin!" 

"Irmo is drawn to all that is associated to gold. Vairë, they say wove a fleece of gold for him. He was drawn to Melyanna, to my father, to you, claiming similar associations to the element of gold. It is his element, after all, for dreams they say are woven of god's gold."

"What draws a vision from a dream?"

"A vision drains your life and leaves you agitated. A dream drains your mind and leaves you placated."

I hummed, musing on his words. 

"Artanis-" he began warily. 

"If I were to offer my life's breath willingly, I could draw forth more visions than dreams from the mirror." 

"It needn't come to that," he murmured. 

"You are dying," I said fiercely. "I don't know how to wage this war you shall leave me."

"You need only-"

"If you say that I need only keep faith, once more, I shall pluck your tongue out and leave it for the crows." 

He fell silent. 

When I returned to the mirror, I offered the first barter of life's breath for sight. My husband came home to find me ailing and disorientated, raving of Luthien reincarnated. 

* * *

On a ship to Valinor,

The Fourth Age

"'Twas true then," Thranduil whispered, stricken. "The mirror drained your life." 

The ship was drawing into the great port of Alqualondë. The spires of my mother's palace stood stark against the sunrise. The winds were fierce, speaking of Manwe's wrath. 

"It is an inanimate object that accepted barters," I said wryly, wanting no pity.

I had dreamt in my life dreams that had stayed with me ever after, and changed the world's course; they had gone through the mirror, and through me, like wine through water, and altered me to the unrecognizable.

Whatever was left of me, I hoped, was still me. 

I let Thranduil and Elrond help me to the little boat. On the shore, I could see Celebrían and Melian awaiting us. Celebrían's features, fair and drawn, spoke of greatness paid for with unspeakable costs. 

"I had tried to shield her from your family's legacy," Celeborn said quietly.

"Blood calls to blood," I said, tired to even ask him for forgiveness anymore. I saw our paths ahead, and the crossroads we were stood upon.

Our child came rushing to me when the boat struck land. 

"Mother! What is left of you?" Celebrían asked, sorrowed.

"Enough."

It had to be enough.

* * *

Without Celeborn's strength, I could not have cremated my mother. 

"Take her army and ride to Tirion," I told him. 

"Galadriel, let me come with you," he urged. He had rarely pleaded with me for anything in our lives together. 

"I must go alone," I said soothingly. 

I was glad for this, that I had managed to save him at least. He would live. He would return to Bria, to our grandchildren. 

"Tell my father-" I began, but shook my head. Cowards deserve nothing. 

"Tell him yourself," Celeborn insisted. "Let me come with you, please." 

"They will need you in Tirion. My father is no commander of men."

"He tried to tell me," he said, grim of face. "He tried to tell me."

"What did he say?" 

"I asked him how to bear the inevitable with grace," Celeborn said softly, bringing his hand to cup my face. 

He had known. He had known all along what the parting of our fates would mean. I had no words to console this brave man whom I had loved everyday as I made ready to die. 

I had never borne the inevitable with grace. Some of my family had. Findaráto had, in the high halls of Tol Sirion. Macalaurë had, as he stood deathwatch. Atarinkë had, in the caves of Doriath, when he had died in my arms. Ereinion had, when he had seen his fate in Mordor. Indis, my grandmother, had. 

"Do you know how I shall bear this?" Celeborn asked me. 

Bereaved, widowed, alone, he said, "I shall not call the sunbeam bright." 

I made to kiss him, but he shook his head and stepped away. He continued, "It is time now, Galadriel. Go on, then. Go bravely on, my fearless heart." 

* * *


	4. What else endures (A tale for Maglor)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maglor wants a tale from his cousin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Careful with this chapter. Adult content warnings for references to war, torture, death, rape.

**Part IV**

**What else endures**

_A tale for Maglor_

Valinor,

The Fourth Age

"What are you doing here?" Macalaurë exclaimed, terrified, as we ran away to higher ground from the fires and the rising tide, hand in hand. 

There were corpses all about us, of Vanyarin and Noldorin armies. It had been massacre. I was not surprised. Oromë had led this flank. His ichor drenched us still, burning through our clothes and shoes and skin. 

Macalaurë continued his tirade. 

"This is a battleground! It is as the War of Wrath! It is as Pharazon's armada! They mean to sunder the land and sink us under the ocean!"

In his predictability, I took comfort. 

"You are mostly correct," I said, breathless, as we reached the highest courtyard of Formenos, where stood Míriel's statue. 

We would sunder the land and destroy the halls of Mandos and the gardens of Lórien, the seat of Taniquetil and the forges of Aulë. 

Tears unnumbered shall ye shed. I had run out of tears but I had not run out of faith. 

"Why did you come here?" Macalaurë asked again.

Here dreams dared not tread. Here they would come in the end, wounded as a rabid beast, with nowhere else to turn to. 

"Cousin, you should not be here!" Macalaurë said, frightened for me. "My mind is untethered."

Dreams walked in him, potent, as golden as honey. Not very much longer then. 

"Stay with me," I commanded him, as the old world fell to cinders, as sea and fire claimed all that was broken. "Stay with me." 

"Tell me a story," he whispered, coming to cup my face. "Sing me a song. Let my mind hold to your voice." 

I clung to him as he clung to me. The scent of him was home. We were weeping and laughing, as we waited for the end.

"What shall you have of me?"

"Tell me the story of how you came to call him Russandol," he begged. 

I thought of Celeborn, of how he had named me Galadriel. I had once despised him for it, finding it cruel that he had taken even my name from me. I saw now it had only been love. 

* * *

Barad Eithel,

The First Age

"Where is the King?"

"Where is the Crown Prince?"

The clamor in the court was bedlam. They demanded to see Nolofinwë. They demanded to see Findekáno. 

Nolofinwë had not left his chambers since news of Irissë's disappearance in the dark forest had arrived. Findekáno had returned from his searches and had turned to ale to soothe his grief for his lost sister. 

"They shall hold court tomorrow," I said, striving to placate the angry courtiers and commanders. 

"You have been telling us the same words for two weeks now!" They exclaimed. 

"Let us see to the business of the court first," I began. 

There were weeks worth of petitions to see to. Rule had fallen by the wayside when the tidings had arrived. 

"Let the King see to his kingdom!" One of the courtiers barked. "We have waited patiently so far. He cannot continue to place his dead daughter over his people!"

Irissë was not dead! We would know if she were. Tyelko would know! I brought a hand to my throat to quell my sob. I could not afford to give them a sign of weakness. 

"Tomorrow," I promised, standing my ground.

The court muttered and cast me dark glances, before disbanding. 

I went to Nolofinwë's doors and knocked, but there was no response. Sighing, I bid one of the maids to leave food outside his doors. He had not eaten in weeks, despite my begging outside his door. He meant to starve to death, the guards said in hushed voices, gossiping as they stood idle. I scowled at them for their fear mongering, and when I turned the corner, I wiped my tears furiously away. 

I went to Findekáno. He was in his cups, disorientated and exhausted. 

"You cannot go on as this," I told him gently. 

My valiant cousin, who had held me on the Ice when I faltered. As a child, my heart had skipped a beat whenever I had seen him, whenever he had taken me riding or taught me to dress game. On the Ice, when we two alone could sing to hold our people together, I had hearkened to him.

Angband had ruined him, as it had ruined many others. 

I knelt before him and cupped his face. His eyes were bleary and his lips cracked from dehydration. 

"I need you to end this," I implored him. "Please, Findekáno." 

"Need is a bare and terrible word, isn't it?" He laughed. "What chalice shall I imbibe of, cousin? Only speak the word. Thus falls to me what my betters spurned."

"It is I, Artanis!" I exclaimed, wondering if he recognized me at all.

"Come to save me from myself?" He sneered, pouring himself another. 

"Yes," I said fiercely, placing my hand on his wrist, before he could bring the cup to his mouth. Startled, he met my gaze. Taking heart, I struck the bottle away. Fury rose in him, violent and ugly. I had made a mistake, I knew then. Frightened, I hastened to my feet from where I was knelt before him. 

"No," he said softly, catching me by the lap, dumping me onto his thighs. "If you must forbid my vice, you had best offer me a replacement."

I cannot remember how I made my way to my quarters afterwards, or how I appeased the frightened cries of the maids in the corridors. If Nolofinwë could ignore his realm and starve to death, so could I.

I wished my father had been there. 

* * *

The courtiers panicked when they heard of my retreat. They sent summons everyday, but I did not let anyone in. 

I heard clarions after four days.

Irissë! She had been found!

I could not muster the energy to stir even so. Let her come to me. For the first time in weeks, I knew hope.

They broke down the doors.

Maitimo stepped in and thanked the locksmiths profusely, before sending the prurient maids and smiths away. 

"Irissë?" 

He shook his head. His eyes reflected alarm when he saw the state of me. He came to me silently, to where I lay upon my chaise. Without speaking a word, he knelt before me and brushed his fingers over the swollen bruise on my forehead. I had struck the hearth when I had fallen in my haste to get away that night.

"A bath, and then food, and then to bed with you," he declared softly. 

Consumed by lethargy as I was, I did not bother to answer. 

He sighed and went to see to a bath. "I have it from here," he was telling the maids, when they made to enter to bring in the ewers of hot water. 

"My Prince, you cannot-" 

"I refuse to set your shoulder if you dislocate it," I called to him tiredly. 

He allowed them to enter, though he hovered about, shielding me from their gaze. I loathed his chivalry. Where had he been when I had needed him? 

When he offered his arm to me, I sighed and shook my head. A few moments, and then I would bloody get up myself. 

"My adamant Artanis," he whispered, staying beside me as I hauled myself up and trudged to the bath. 

"Out," I told him, voice as brittle as broken glass. I scarce recognized myself. 

"Let me see to you," he said gently, helping me into the bath, fussing about as he checked the water temperature, as he fetched dried herbs and soap and washclothes.

He hesitated a scant moment before bringing his hand to my collar, to undo the laces of my gown. He fumbled so, showing his inexperience with women. I tried not to remember how effortlessly our drunken cousin had stripped me. 

"Stay with me," he urged, as he finally managed to undo the laces and peel off the gown. I sunk into the water and submerged my head, wishing I could drown. His hand was kind as he washed my hair. 

"I can do it myself," I told him. "I am not an invalid. And I have had enough of cousins."

"I surrendered to your care willingly," he reminded me. "There is no crevice or plane in me that you have not seen and touched with your healer's hands. Let me see to you now, please."

I closed my eyes and let him. His movements as he bathed me, while inexperienced, were not virginal. 

"There was a woman," I said bleakly, looking at him once more.  
  
"Elerrína was her name," he replied.

I must be in quite the dire state, for him to give away a secret so easily. His voice gave nothing away, but the turmoil in his gaze concealed little. He had cried out her name, pleading, again and again, for endless nights when he had been brought back to us. 

He flinched when he ran the washcloth over the bruises on my knee. 

"You have not a healer's dispassion," I told him. 

"I am not a healer, whatever I am," he agreed. 

"Did you see Nolofinwë?" 

"Yes. I persuaded him to sleep." 

Nolofinwë had refused to open the door for me. I had begged him for weeks. It was not unfair, I reminded myself. He was the only child Nolofinwë had raised from birth.

"The court?"

"They summoned me. I was still occupied with the search. They demanded that I return. So I complied. I promised to see to the realm until Nolofinwë is restored to health."

They would not have me, but they would gladly have him. It was not unfair, I chided myself. He had worn the crown once. What did we call a King that abdicated? It was merely placation to unite our factions that he had named himself dispossessed. The Prince, our people called him, and we knew it meant none else, even if all of our Grandfather's heirs were princes and princesses. 

"Telpë?"

"He is well. Terrified, waiting in our courtyard for news, but blessedly unharmed." 

Good. Telpë was the only innocent among us. Only he, among us, had not slain kin. 

"Him?"

"I saw to him." 

"Did you bed him?" I asked bitterly. "It was your name he called when he choked me. It was your name he called when he whipped me. It was your name he called when he-" I swallowed my words. If I did not speak, perhaps it had happened only in a dream. 

"I have not needed the vice in many years now," he said softly, withholding neither remorse nor grief when he met my gaze. "I wish that I never had."

"I will kill him."

"You must see to your welfare first," he said quietly, helping me from the bath, drying me, cladding me in soft robes. His hand trembled as he searched for a comb at my dresser. I let him comb my hair. The last one to had been Irissë, my cousin lost in a forest. 

"I cannot braid your hair." 

"You acquitted yourself remarkably," I said truthfully, finding in my ocean of despair a spark of admiration for his perseverance. 

"Shall I send word to Findaráto?" he offered. 

"No, he must be grieving. I cannot add to his sorrows."

"Perhaps you may join Atarinkë then?" 

"He will have his hands full with Tyelko."

"Macalaurë?"

What had it cost him to speak that name? His mien betrayed nothing. 

"He is married to a woman who understands nothing."

That earned me a flash of expression. Good, I knew to cut him. I wanted to cut him.

Macalaurë had offered me marriage, but had made no qualms about where his heart lay. Findekáno had changed because of him. I had wanted no part of their tragedy. I had not deserved it. I no longer knew what I deserved. 

"Círdan?"

"Cousin, he tolerates us for your sake."

"Turkáno then?"

"Why are you trying to force me to leave? It was not my fault!"

"I cannot change Findekáno," he said quietly.

" _Oh, but you have changed him,_ " I wanted to say. I refrained. 

"Well then, come with me to Himring," he offered. 

He had never sought to bring anyone there. My cousins and brothers visited them frequently, keeping an eye on him. _Is he sane? Is he alive?_ , our letters to each other would ask again and again. 

"I have had enough of the cold."

The cold of the Great Ice of Helcaraxë lingered in my bones. 

"There are hothouses. You shall like Himring, cousin. It is far away from everywhere."

"It is close to Angband." 

"Indeed! The views of the Thangorodrim are excellent at sunrise."

"Well then, so be it. I shall accompany you."

He smiled at me, innocent in his joy for a moment's sliver, before duty burdened him again. 

"I must see to the Council," he said regretfully. "Promise me that you shall sup? There are no lobsters, I am afraid, but my men fished for you. The kitchens are serving perch today." 

He had not known what he would come to find in Barad Eithel. He had spent weeks searching for Irissë, managing Findaráto's grief and Findekáno's alcoholism. He had been summoned by the court, and must have feared for Nolofinwë so. Urgent summons meant death, in these unhallowed times. And yet he had the presence of mind to send his men to fish for me. 

"I have not had perch in a while," I said. I managed not to flinch when he kissed my cheek. 

* * *

"Did he take his old quarters?"

"Yes, milady," the maid answered. Her eyes were wide-eyed as she beheld the bruises on my face. "Should we call the healers?" 

"No," I said firmly. "See to our celebrations for the Festival of Lights next week." 

"The King's daughter-"

"It is when we have lost that we must look to life," I told her. 

We must look to life. We must look to what was left. 

* * *

I knocked on his doors. He bade me enter. He had not barred his doors yet for the night. He must be expecting to be summoned by emissaries. 

He was at the desk, working through Nolofinwë's correspondence, in the guttering lights of the few beeswax candles he had lit. There were maps and plans scattered about. There were our accounts of the granaries and the harvests in reams and reams of scrolls. Little wonder why the court had been anxious to see Nolofinwë's absence substituted urgently by someone they trusted. 

"It is late. You should sleep," he said, when he saw me. 

"They did not let me administer to their damned realm," I muttered. 

"Nolofinwë's shorthand is indecipherable," he said, smiling fondly at my grumpiness. "I am a poor substitute, but one that knows his ways."

Equal of will and whim, they had ruled in Tirion together. They could have continued so, if not for Fëanáro's madness. Then I would not have been harmed. Then Irissë would not be lost. Instead, they had been splintered, one left to hold the east and the other left to hold the west, as they labored under the inevitable doom. 

I went to my cousin, to look over his shoulder as he painstakingly merged diplomacy's velvet with rule's iron in each letter he wrote. 

There was a storm raging without. He flinched each time lightning struck and continued working. 

"Afraid of storms, cousin?" I asked him, abruptly wishing him to know misery as I knew it then.

"I would not recommend being strung to rocks, unsheltered," he said steadily, continuing to compose the missives, despite his involuntary flinches each time lightning flashed. "Flesh and blood serve as excellent conduits to lightning, did you know?"

He was mindful, lifting his fingers so that the quill would not jolt jagged on parchment whenever he flinched. That he knew himself so well, in his weaknesses, tore me.

I shook my head, my misery turning bleaker still. What did it serve to harm him? He had endured enough. 

"I cannot sleep through a storm, unless I partake of opium," he continued. 

"I cannot stomach the thought of sleep," I admitted, drawn to confession by his forthrightness. "Dreams have walked in me since then."

I dreamed of Findekáno chasing me in the gardens of Lórien, of the green earth shifting under me, as I screamed in a labyrinth where none came to save me. All paths ended in the same place, and I found myself trapped in a bier under silvered light, garlanded in hyacinths, as red pooled over my fingers and belly. _My sweet girl_ , Findekáno said, but he spoke in the honey warm voice of the golden lord of dreams. 

"Shall I delegate the matter of the patrols to you?" My cousin offered. "It can occupy you for hours, I promise."

"You merely loathe the tactical and have no qualms in delegation," I accused him. 

He shrugged, shameless. This was why he had worked effortlessly with Nolofinwë. They had complementary strengths. 

"Come to bed with me?" I asked bravely then, impulsive. I saw him flinch again, though it was no lightning that frightened him on hearing my words. 

Fragile, shattered things we were, the healer and the unhealed. Revenant, they had called him, when he had returned to us. He had greeted our people warmly, despite the pain that blazed in every nerve of him, and I had held him moored with mandragora and poppies. 

What would Macalaurë have said of us, if he saw us now? His brother watched me warily as if I were one of his torturers in Angband. 

"You know what you ask of me."

"Yes," I whispered, unable to meet his gaze, unwilling to see the torment that must be painted in his star-silver eyes.

He shied away from all platonic touches. On a night as this, when he was grieving for Irissë, when a storm raged outside frightening him so, I knew how he loathed to be seen.

"You shall see to the patrol plans tomorrow," he bartered, voice a guttering wisp. 

"Gladly," I said, laughing despite how precipitous we were stood at chasm's mouth. 

There was no need to ask if he preferred his bed to mine. He guarded his privacy desperately. He had chosen to seek Findekáno for their bitter chalice, but he had always returned to his bed at the end of their activities, regardless of the state of him. 

The silks of his bed were from Valmar's mulberry looms of white.

Nolofinwë spoiled him so. 

I saw to the fire, and then to heaping the blankets uniformly. In our family, only Fëanáro and I had a particular whim to make the bed just so. Nolofinwë, in kinder times, had called us delightfully obsessive. There were no pillows, as was my cousin's preference. I scowled at him.

"I can send for a maid," he offered, even as he flinched when lightning struck once more. 

"It shan't matter," I said tiredly, wanting to sleep and forget, wanting no more of dreams, wanting no more of life. 

Was Fëanáro happier in the Void? He had not been happy while he lived. 

I undressed to my chemise and slipped under the covers. My companion, fretting, watched me.

"Wear your sleep clothes," I ordered him. He was still in the fine woolen robes he had worn to court. He hesitated, but nodded and went to change.

"I am afraid I might strike you in panic," he warned, when he joined me once more. Without the bulk of his robes, I saw how thin he had become. The lack of Macalaurë's care was telling on his health. 

"You shan't be the first to this week," I muttered. 

He sighed, exasperated, and said nothing even if he trembled so when I pulled him to me. In the early days of his recovery, when he had not known lucidity, Irissë and I had noticed that he calmed when we held him to our bosom. We had then considered it as him seeking Nerdanel, though he had not been close to his mother as a boy. 

We had been wrong. Elerrína had been her name. 

"Did she hold you so?"

"Every night that she could," he whispered, pleading, refusing to meet my gaze. "I left her to die in my place." 

"I have you," I promised him, caressing his tangled wreath of hair.

He wept silently, as the storm raged. 

I had not seen him as vulnerable as he was then. Even in the throes of pain, he had not seemed as lost and lonely and childlike in his shattering. He had only been a boy when he had begun his war. 

"I am not sure delegating all the dreadfully boring chores is worth this embarrassment," he murmured, as I wiped away the tears on his cheek, as he strived to clad himself in pride once more. 

That tattered pride was all that he had left. 

"Set it aside tonight," I demanded, holding the mangled heart of him safe in my arms. "Let me see you."

"I cannot bear this, cousin," he said softly, though he let me soothe him, though he let me hold him. 

This was his amends, I knew, for dragging me unwittingly into the bitter chalice Findekáno and he had drained to the dregs. This was his justice, in offering himself in obscene vulnerability to my mercy. He knew as well as anyone else that I was unmerciful. He meant to draw my wrath to himself, to spare Findekáno.

Fool.

He did not know that nobody had given themselves so freely to me. Nobody had surrendered themselves to my mercy. He offered penance, unknowing that this was the most precious of gifts I had been granted. 

What did it matter that I had not been found worthy to have the love I craved? What did it matter that I had not been found deserving to have the belonging I craved? I had been enough for this, for my cousin to set aside his facades of protection and lie quietly weeping in my arms. Nobody else had had this of him. It was not trust, but it was surrender, and he had deemed me worthy of it. Ecstatic, I found purpose anew. I would protect him. 

In his breaking, as his tenuous, frightened grip on himself fell apart, I determined I would tread carefully, sparing him all I could. I knew I would not dream, not when I had this to protect. 

"Let me help," I said quietly. 

"It is not your war."

The helplessness in his voice was stark. He no longer believed he could shield me from the wrath of the Valar. He no longer believed that he could end the war before it came to me. 

"It shall be my war one day," I stated, over his stricken sobs. "Tell me what you see."

"Yes," he whispered to my command, breath hitching. "Under the statue, under falling stars, in a holy place where dreams dare not tread, when your name is spoken to you again. Herald of dusk, Faithkeeper, _Artanis_." 

I cupped his chin and looked at the strange light that illumined his gaze. He had returned from Angband with this fire, cold and white and ruthless, which bore little resemblance to the passionate spirits of our Grandfather's scions. He had spoken my fate, I knew, even if I did not understand it. I was not frightened. 

I was not frightened, but he was, as he cowered in my hold, waiting to be struck. 

"I have you," I promised him. 

Let this be my purpose. No crown would come to me. No King would I wed. I would be my cousin's faithkeeper, after his death, bound to the cause he meant to massacre us for. I would be his vessel of justice. 

"I cannot-" he began, frightened. "I must see you safe to Arafinwë."  
  
"You must trust me."

"I am in your arms, weak and frightened, unable to hide anything," he said softly. "When I returned, I surrendered to your care. I have always trusted you, Artanis. My surrender is my trust. I am not capable of more."

"Let us barter then," I offered, unwilling to let him retreat. "May I call you Russandol?"

The name that Nolofinwë had given him. The name that Macalaurë clung to. 

"A fool's name for a fool's cause?" He asked, wistful and tender.

"Our cause, now. Let us know each other with the names that mean us the best," I said steadily. 

And I held him as he had once held me in the gardens of Lórien. 

* * *

Valinor,

The Fourth Age.

"His faith in you was absolute," Macalaurë said gently.

"Artanis!" he screamed then, as dreams walked among us. 

The names that mean us the best.

Herald of dusk, Faithkeeper, _Artanis_. 

Under the statue, under falling stars, in a holy place where dreams dare not tread, my name was spoken to me again. 

I understood the last of the conjurer's secrets. Gold had drawn the lord of dreams here, absolute and final. 

As the Silmarilli rushed through Eru's make, reshaping, reworking, undoing the old, as they heralded dusk, they had moved in accord, leaving no safe haven for dreams to tread. 

In Formenos, upon shifting earth, against rising tide, as fires rose from all sides, the Lord of Dreams came to me once more, one last time. 

Behind me, towering, stood the statue of the Broideress. 

"There you are, my sweet girl. Brave and foolish. All in vain. What else endures of this broken world, but dreams?" Irmo asked me, preparing to end this.

"Not even dreams," I promised. 

* * *


	5. Painted is her Occident (The Tale of Bilbo, Burglar Extraordinaire)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final story she tells is no tale of hers. Instead, it is the tale of Bilbo, Burglar Extraordinaire.

  
**Part V**

**Painted is her Occident**

_The tale of Bilbo Baggins, Burglar Extraordinaire_

  
  


A brave, new world

  
I flinched whenever a man drew close to touch me, even if he be of my family. I did not mind if I were the one to touch them first. 

Findaráto, ever considerate, waited for me to initiate our embraces. Turkáno followed suit. Irissë went further, and cautioned our family to heed my reservations. 

"I have nothing to be frightened of," I lamented to Irissë, as we walked together by the river. 

"I see Eol's fetters on my wrists still," she said plainly. "I doubt that fear is rational, Artanis. Allow yourself this."

She had become the joy of my latter days. 

Alone, I had weathered the ages. If anyone could have returned to me, in those long years of loneliness, I would have prayed for Irissë. 

When I had heard that Laurefindë had been restored and returned by the Valar to Middle Earth, I had bitterly resented them for it. Irissë had done less harm. Why had they returned a warrior instead of a woman? I knew why. The Lord of Lórien had spoken for Laurefindë. There had been nobody to speak for my family.

"I trust them," I reiterated to her. "This is our family." 

I trusted even Findekáno, blessedly free as he was of alcoholism and other vices. He treated me as chivalrously as once he had, in Tirion. He loved me as once he had, on the Ice. My heart kindled to him, despite myself. Foolish thing, I chided myself each time I sought his eye. 

"Patience," Irissë said kindly. "Time cures all things, Artanis."

 _A woman before her time_ , Celeborn had often said in apology to the Sindarin court, whenever I had pushed forward legislations that demanded fairness for the vassals. 

Time had not managed to cure me yet, perhaps because I was a woman before her time, anachronism that I had become. 

"I am jealous of you, you know," Irissë was saying. 

"Whatever for?" 

Tyelko loved her. He had not sought another after the loss of her. He catered to her every whim and wish. Nobody had loved me so. 

Sometimes, when I could not sleep for days, as I remembered Celeborn, as I remembered all that had befallen me, as I remembered all that I had chosen, I would drag myself to Irissë's quarters. Tyelko would not speak a word as he surrendered her bed to me and took his leave. Irissë would say nothing, holding me in her arms, singing me to sleep. Their silent kindness left me flayed. 

Beggared, I clung to their discretion. 

What had Irissë to be jealous of?

"My father loves you more than he loves his own children," Irissë said. 

I did not know if it was love. 

"It is gratitude," I corrected her. "He is grateful I returned our cousin to him."

"It is not gratitude when he calls you _my adamant Artanis_ ," Irissë said, slapping my wrist in exasperation. "Try to discard your selective blindness, cousin. You are deeply loved, not for what you have done, but for who you are to us."

I said nothing. It would bear thinking over. She had nothing to gain by lying to me. And ever, she had seen the hearts of men while I had seen only their motivations and incentives. 

I would mull over her words. I had plenty of time to while away during the night. 

"Tyelko and I are hunting afield this week. Shall you come with us?"

She offered, always. I declined, always. It was the only time they had, away from my interruptions when I panicked and ran craven to seek solace in her arms. 

* * *

  
She must have told the peskiest of my cousins of my sleepless plight, because Russandol climbed the damned trellis to sneak into my chambers that night as I sat in my bed wide-awake thinking of Celeborn. 

I would throw a vase at him, I decided, but then refrained, as I watched him fret over me; clumsy, oblivious, inexperienced, and yet determined to comfort. 

"Fall off that trellis and I shan't be the one to face Nolofinwë's wrath," I warned him.

"I think I must have been an excellent climber once," he said brightly. 

He had been. He had scaled perilous cliffs with three limbs. I scowled at him, for his incessant attempts to infer his past from my reactions. 

He had asked me, once in Belfalas, for the mercy of oblivion. I had bought him that, only for him to blissfully seek himself once again, from every word we spoke and silenced. _Aletheia_ had been his weapon once. He had wielded it deftly to seek the truth of the Valar, of Eru's creation. 

He may not have his memories, but his mind remained as fine as it had once been. I entertained no fallacious hope as our family and our people did, that my cousin was defanged to powerlessness. His mind was restored to him, and it had ended worlds with neither sword nor sorcery once. What need had he for the powers of other gods? 

He had lost his mind, at the end, this one thing he had cherished and loved of himself. I had begun my mourning then. Let him not remember it, I had sworn, weeping, as he lay feckless and enfeebled of mind; I had then resolved to be his lethe. 

It was my memories of his end that stayed my flinching when he slipped into bed beside me. 

Exhausted, I went to him and let him hold me. In his arms, in the arms of the oblivion I had crafted, I slept. 

* * *

Macalaurë returned to us. 

If I had breathed faith, he had breathed love. And beneath our feet, dreams had broken. 

"My dearest Artanis," he said, as he came to embrace me. 

Our family looked on alarmed, and Irissë hastened to intercede. Macalaurë's arms about me did not frighten me. I clung to him, tired and hopeful. 

* * *

  
"You are not wary of Macalaurë," Russandol said, when he found me in his quarters. 

"You were staring at his arse," I accused.

"He is desirable," he replied, unbothered by my words. 

In all places and times, he had wanted this. It heartened me to see him wanting without shame and fear. 

"Be that as it may, you are not wary of him as you are of others."

"I am not wary of you."

It was the truth. I had pitied him. I had resented him. I had mourned him. I had not feared him, in oblivion or in memory. 

"You are my maker, Artanis. What manner of maker fears the made?" 

There was no rancour to his words. Pride. His pride in me was overwhelming and it cut. Nobody, not even my father, had been as proud of me as he was. It thrilled me, and it frightened me, and I desperately wanted to prove myself worthy. Always, in all places, I had wanted to be his equal, only to falter when he deemed me so. 

"My dominion contained to bones and flesh," I said, laughing, wondering at the strangeness of our peace, marvelling that it had truly come to this, that we had broken Gods and Creation to save ourselves under the arch of another heaven. 

"Well-formed dominion," he corrected me. 

I had held him when there had been nothing left of him well-formed. Oh, so glad was I that I had won him oblivion. 

"You could-"

"Absolutely not!" I said, seeing where his convoluted mind had taken him to. 

I had once sought Macalaurë, claiming it convenient, and it had broken my heart when he remained true to his north. 

"He seems attracted to women. Sexual healing, I am told, is an excellent mechanism to overcome-" 

"Stop parroting Findaráto!" I cried. Seeing him prepare to continue speaking, I leapt onto his bed and pummeled him with a pillow so that he would shut up.

"You have terrible ideas," I informed him. "If you think I am taking advice from an avowed nudist who is taking advice from an orgiast, you are mistaken. I have _standards_."

"Peace!" He exclaimed, letting me vent my exasperation, splaying his limbs and then trapping me atop him, in a mesh of limb and crimson curls. "Ha, now you cannot be a tyrant anymore."

"You have terrible ideas," I reiterated, breathless from my exertion. I ought to have panicked at how I could not break free of his hold, but I decided instead to settle down and sulk. 

Wondrous and terrible had been his ways once. Now, they were merely ludicrous and quaint. 

"I am not a nudist. I am merely protesting the wastage of fabric to keep archaic notions of social modesty." 

"Keep at it. The villagers have never taken to the outdoor chores with such alacrity before. The sight of you sprawled on fat rounded rocks has turned them all painters and poets." 

Let him continue in his harmless eccentricities. I doubted Macalaurë would permit any of this to go on once he staked his possessive claim. 

"Tell me a story," my companion asked, as I settled under the covers.

"Stop begging me for clues," I warned him. "Oblivious you are, and so you shall remain."

"You need not speak of our past."

"Very well then," I said, relenting. "A story you shall have. Are you ready to hear the tale of Bilbo Baggins, the cleverest of thieves, the most respectable Hobbit that lived on the Hill in Bag End?"

"What is a Hobbit?" 

"Quiet, or you shan't have my tale." 

> "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." 

* * *

"You seem in cheery spirits," Turkáno said in the morning, when I joined him in the library to work together on our book. 

I bent to kiss his cheek, overflowing with fondness. Mischief took me then, and I licked up a stripe on his skin, as Irissë often did. 

"Beast!" He exclaimed, catching me by the nape and moving me away from his sainted skin. 

"You taste of almonds."

"Atarinkë likes almond oil," he muttered, bidding me sit beside him, so that we could begin our writing for the day. 

If he cast me wary glances whenever our fingers brushed accidentally, it was only the norm of his care. I did not flinch, I realized, as I would have at these unintentional touches before.

There was merit to the tale of Bilbo Baggins. Well-rested, oddly at peace, ensconced in a strange sense of safety, I knew hope.

For my sake, I prayed that I had improved at the art of story-telling. 

* * *

After supper, Russandol came to me, burning in anticipation. 

"What did Gandalf hide under Bilbo's mantelpiece?" He asked, tugging me to his quarters. Our uncle watched us surprised, seeing me go without fear in a man's company. I could not explain anything to him, in haste as Russandol was to continue the story.

He hearkened so to the Grey Wizard, innocent in his oblivion. 

> "If you had dusted the mantelpiece you would have found this just under the clock," said Gandalf, handing Bilbo a note (written, of course, on his own note-paper).
> 
> This is what he read:
> 
> "Thorin and Company to Burglar Bilbo greeting!"

"Oh, but he was no burglar!" 

"He wanted an adventure." 

"He did not!" 

"He needed an adventure," I amended. 

"I doubt it very much," my cousin said softly, placing his head on my chest when I tugged him close. "He had no choice." 

"Well, he had an adventure, and quite enjoyed himself. You shan't hear the rest if you keep interrupting."

"Tomorrow," he said sleepily. 

"Tomorrow," I promised, glad that he and I had tomorrows left. 

* * *

"I have always said he is as foot-rot," Macalaurë said, amused, when he chanced upon me scribbling notes of Bilbo's tale instead of the epic Turkáno and I had been slaving to write for years.

Macalaurë had often claimed that loving his brother was as foot-rot, contagious and incurable. He had spoken the truth. I thought of that eccentric, complex man whose war I had won. 

"I have grown fond of him and have no desire to be cured." 

"Keep him," Macalaurë said generously. "Nobody has deserved him more."

"Are you now in charge of his dispensation?" I asked, entertained by his benevolence. Once he would have screeched bloody murder at anyone who dared express an iota of fondness for his brother. 

"Oh, but I have him," Macalaurë replied, awed and at peace. Then, lightly, he said, "He is quite the restorative. Allow him to heal you, as you healed him once."

"There is no arcane rite of healing. I am telling him a story."

"Are you regaling him with children's tales?" He remarked, sitting beside me, pulling close the notes. 

"A tale for the traveler returned home," I corrected him.

Thranduil and Gandalf had told me first of Bilbo's tale when I had lain ailing after breaking the Necromancer's power in the south of Mirkwood. They had taken turns, miming character voices to cheer me up. 

Gandalf had done Bard and Bilbo. Thranduil had done the Dwarves. For reasons known only to them, they had giggled and let Gandalf do Thranduil's voice. The affectation of plumminess in Gandalf's mimicry whenever he imitated Thranduil had made me laugh until my ribs ached. 

It was the first time I had laughed in years. In their company, I had known finally that I was no longer alone. 

* * *

>   
> "Hrnmm! it smells like elves!" thought Bilbo, and he looked up at the stars. They were burning bright and blue. Just then there came a burst of song like laughter in the trees.

"Do Elves smell?" Russandol asked me, catching my hand and delicately taking a whiff of my wrist. 

He had reeked, when he had returned to us, and it had taken weeks to scrub him clean. No trivial feat, for we had to shave him bald, for we had to let his festering wounds scab over, for we had to cauterize the open flesh on him. 

Macalaurë had sung him to sleep, holding the wretched flesh of him tenderly so as not to aggravate the harm done to him. Then I had drugged him insensate as long as I could. 

When he had woken, in a rare bout of lucidity, he had clutched my hand, desperate, his bloodshot gaze on the brother he loved. _Hold me to life,_ he had demanded. So I had held him to life as best as I could, in ways that no ethical healer would have chosen. If Findekáno had numbed his mind with whip and knife, I had numbed his flesh with opiates. 

"To the Hobbits, Elves smelled of starshine and moonlight."

"Were we as absinthe then?" 

"Some of us," I allowed, delighting in the bright curl of his mouth at my words.

* * *

"I had wanted to marry you to him once," Fëanáro told me, when I idled in the forge watching him work.

Quiet and focused as he was, he did not care if I watched him for hours. I found reassuring the routine and repetition of his movements as he blew glass or carved wood. 

I had watched Celeborn spar often, taking comfort in the steady dance of his graceful movements. 

"I married who I wanted to marry," I told my uncle. 

"The Prince of Doriath. How was he? Was he a good husband to you?" He asked me, curious. 

"He was my husband," I said softly. "I loved him. He strayed from bed to bed, and always returned to me. I ruled his people and he trusted me with them. We never made amends after our daughter's marriage went awry. We carried on, nevertheless, for our life together had defined us more than our lives apart." 

"I cannot imagine how he must have grieved," Fëanáro whispered, coming to my side. He took me in his arms, and I did not flinch as he apologized to me for everything he had done. 

"It was not your fault, uncle." 

"Oh, but it was, my dearest. Your father would have slain me in cold blood for it."

"My husband was a magnificent hunter. He was one of the best commanders of men in battle." 

Fëanáro stepped away, listening eagerly to this tale of the man I had loved and left under the skies of another heaven. 

"He named me Galadriel."  


* * *

> "There were many paths that led up into those mountains, and many passes over them. But most of the paths were cheats and deceptions and led nowhere or to bad ends; and most of the passes were infested by evil things and dreadful dangers. The dwarves and the hobbit, helped by the wise advice of Elrond and the knowledge and memory of Gandalf, took the right road to the right pass." 

  
"Elrond the Wise."

"You raised him," I said gently. 

"One I raised came to be Wise?" He wondered. 

"Oh, I daresay that was despite your contributions. Any wisdom he inherited must be from Macalaurë."

"Macalaurë the Wise. Artanis the Wise. Gandalf the Wise. Elrond the Wise. Why is it that only I remain unwise in our lore?" He lamented. 

"You were foolish and peculiar," I informed him, laughing at the face he made. "Exposure to you turned others Wise."

He lapsed into silence, thoughtful. Then he stirred himself to offer his opinions once more.

"I like Gandalf the best in this tale of the hobbit so far." 

"Oh, you would. You have always loved the valiants."

"Well, I like Bilbo too!" He said brightly. "He reminds me of you. Willful and clever and faithful, doing what needs be done, damned be propriety and law, as he is holding together another's cause." 

"I shall have to impress upon you that I was no burglar."

"You steal cheese from Macalaurë's plate." 

"No love for Thorin?"

"None. He seems quite mad."

* * *

"Do you remember that we would write to each other?" Irissë asked me. "Every letter, we would begin with the same words."

"Is he sane? Is he alive?" I reminisced. 

The tradition had continued, until his death. Letters to Elros or Elrond or Ereinion or Círdan that I had written had always held the same opening words, as we traded knowledge and advice in those times of endless war.

"I think he was quite sane," Irissë continued. "I knew what insanity meant when I lived in that forest of twilight. Russandol was eccentric and he enjoyed his secret-keeping. There was no insanity to him."

It was true. It was also untrue. These contradictions of him I had come to accept. On the knife-edge of life, and of sanity, he had walked all alone, and how he had grieved when he had to leave his mantle to me. 

He was the happiest at the end, when his health and mind had fled him. He had been incandescent then, and he had promised me victory.

"I mean to ride to the villages today."

"I can accompany you," Irissë offered. 

"No, I wish to ride alone."

Her hand cupped my wrist and she asked me softly, "Are you ready?"

I nodded. 

I went to the villages, alone, and did not hyperventilate or panic when men came to me complimenting my beauty. 

I returned home with cake.

Irissë and I ate it together, by the river, and refused to share any with our beastly cousins or brothers. 

* * *

> "Chestnuts, chestnuts," Gollum hissed. "Teeth! teeth! my preciousss; but we has only six!" 

"How ghastly!" Russandol exclaimed. "How pitiable! This poor and wretched creature! I hope that Bilbo could help him." 

He had had less than six teeth left by the end; he had swallowed most of them despite my attempts to spare him the horror and to pry them loose after I sedated him to sleep. He had smiled brightly at me, blood burbling upon his lips.

"What manner of creature was Gollum?" 

"A hobbit once," I told him.

"As orcs then! Findaráto told me that orcs were morphed of our kind by evil sorceries!" 

Telpë had been morphed to a beast by Saruman's hand. 

"Yes. Gollum was similar to the orcs."

"Poor Gollum!" 

He had pitied Sauron too. In councils of war, in our courts, he had ever called Sauron _Mairon_. Theirs had been a strange mutual knowing of the torturer and the prisoner. My cousin would not have survived Angband without the torturer's mercy.

 _The Prince_ , Sauron had called my cousin, even after his death. When Sauron had come to my Mirror, reeking of sorcery's foul evil, he had been at his sanest and kindest when speaking of our mutual cause. To the Eye on the Tower and to the Mirror in the Woods both, that prisoner strung on the rocks had represented possibility.

Nobody called my cousin Wise. 

* * *

"Nolofinwë, can I see to the vegetable gardens?"  
  
"You loathe vegetables, Artanis."   
  
"I intend to change my unfounded and criminal loathing of vegetables by cultivating them," I offered. 

"My darling child, your lies are transparent." 

He handed me a bowl of apricots and steepled his fingers. It was his way when he meant to pry into our business. He called it care. We called it nosy interference. 

"Don't!" I exclaimed. "I have no secrets to confess." 

"You have begun walking in the eastern gardens with Findekáno, in the mornings," he said lightly, though his eyes brimmed full of ancient sorrows and care. 

"He has been kind." I blushed, and then scowled at him. "It is none of your bloody affair, uncle!"

"My dearest Artanis, I want only happiness for you." 

When he opened his arms, I gladly went to him. 

* * *

> "What is all this uproar in the forest tonight?" said the Lord of the Eagles. 
> 
> He was sitting, black in the moonlight, on the top of a lonely pinnacle of rock at the eastern edge of the mountains. 
> 
> "I hear wolves' voices! Are the goblins at mischief in the woods?" 

"I wish I had seen the Lord of the Eagles. What a fierce and mighty bird he must have been!" 

On an eagle's back he had come to us once, as flesh and bone I had knit together, with a battered, bruised purpling heart his brother had held deathwatch for. 

"You counted among your friends a pesky eagle," I told him kindly, willing to tell him at least this. "Thorondor was his name. He frequently threatened to steal you away to his eyrie in the mountains. You did not mind, the peculiar thing that you were and are. Macalaurë found this vexing and troublesome."

Turkáno and Russandol had extolled the virtues of only two: Húrin and Thorondor. They had twittered on endlessly in their letters, enthralled by the might and valor of the Man and the Eagle. 

If Thorondor had not been an eagle, I was fairly sure that Russandol would have bedded him. I glanced at my silly cousin. In his own way, I was certain that he had loved the damned eagle. These valiants that had saved him, and he had resisted none of them. 

The first of our valiants Turkáno, Russandol, and I had all loved was Findekáno. 

* * *

Findekáno offered his arm and I accepted. We ambled through the gardens for our morning walk. The maids giggled and whispered in hushed voices to each other as he paid court to me. 

"You have been sleeping well, I see."

"I have undertaken a thankless task."

"Is that what has you perched in the library, muttering to yourself, as you scribble feverishly notes and songs?"

"The tale of the hobbit."

"Whatever is a hobbit?"

"You must ask Russandol."

"He has been good for you."

"He had been terrible for me," I said lightly. "This is my chance to claim repayment."

Findekáno's face was shadowed. I cleared my throat, unwilling to broach that old and sorry tale of ours. 

"I gave up alcohol."

"I know," I whispered. My eyes were burning in the crisp morning air. 

When I chanced a glance at him, there were tears on his cheeks. 

"The damn pollen," I said vehemently. "Nolofinwë and Russandol ought to cease growing flowers in our gardens!" 

"Artanis," Findekáno said, valiant, resolute.

My name on his lips was love. 

* * *

> "Lazy Lob and crazy Cob  
> are weaving webs to wind me.  
> I am far more sweet than other meat,  
> but still they cannot find me!"

"Daring these foul spiders seem a particularly ill-conceived plan!" 

"Well, it was strategy, you see. He meant to save his comrades with his feint."

"Strategy? What if he were caught in their webs! A fool's gambit!"

His sense of self-preservation had been worse.

I said nothing and continued with my tale of the most enterprising burglar hobbit that had lived. 

* * *

"Nobody eats salted fish, Ereinion," I told my nephew. He had come excitedly to my rock by the river bearing a platter of salted mackerel.

"That is not true! Círdan served it on his ships! It keeps well over long voyages, you see."

I eyed him curiously.

"I miss Círdan," he said, quick to spill his heart.

Woebegone, he cut a picture of such tragedy that anyone would have thought that Círdan had been dissected by carrion on a battlefield. 

"He is well," I offered.

"Wherever he is now," Ereinion muttered.

"He is in Valinor. Where else could he be?" I asked, puzzled. 

"He must miss you so." 

"Círdan?" I laughed. "He is quite the self-sufficient man. You and I know that."

Ereinion sighed.

"Oh, well, come with me. I meant to go for a walk. You can swat away the mosquitoes from my path." 

"Why are there mosquitoes?" Ereinion wondered. "If this was a world will-wrought, why are there mosquitoes and rats?" 

"Ask Findaráto. He will tell you all about the importance of pests to a complete ecosystem. I believe he is merely justifying his existence."

We had reached the Lake. 

By its placid waters sat Russandol and Turkáno, excitedly whispering to each other in hushed voices, huddled together. 

"Cousins!" I called to them. 

"Come over, Artanis!" Turkáno exclaimed. "Come over!" 

Ereinion and I made our way to them. They reeked. On Turkáno's lap, cupped in Russandol's palms, wet and blind and tiny was a nestling. I laughed and laughed until I wept in Ereinion's arms, overwhelmed. 

"Is this your eagle?" Ereinion asked us. 

"Thorondor," my cousins said in unison. 

* * *

> "The King beneath the mountains,  
> The King of carven stone,  
> The lord of silver fountains  
> Shall come into his own!"

  
"Findaráto loved a King that dwelt in caves, he said," Russandol told me. "I wager he had been more sane than our Thorin." 

Elu had been sane, until the Silmaril had come to him, with its blood-price of my brother's death. Grief had unraveled him. Neither Oropher's counsel nor Melian's care had ameliorated his state. 

Once, he had asked Celeborn to kill him before he brought harm to his people. Celeborn had refused, stricken. 

That night, Celeborn had come to me, wretched and fearful, and I had held him and listened to his tale of woe. How I had wished that I could act for him! I had not, for I knew it would bring him to discard me. I had been frightened by then, after the death of my uncles and brothers, that I would have only Celeborn at the end. I had begun to cling to him. 

"I wish we had saved Findaráto's King!" Russandol continued. 

It had been madness, pell-mell. I had done nothing to carve this creation, to carve the souls and matter that breathed here. I had only saved one. I still did not understand in entirety how he had achieved the rest, though I had strong speculations on the matter.

"Are you under the impression that you and I adventured together gathering souls from the Void beyond the Great Door of the Night?"

"I don't know what that means," he said lightly. "Did we not adventure together?"

"No, you died, you blighted thing!" I said, exasperated. "I was left to speculate. You did not leave me a map." 

"You did not need a map," he said in a tone of absolute conviction.

"Whyever not?" I demanded. 

I had once poured my life into the Mirror, striving to see the Conjurer's secrets. 

"You were my heir, weren't you?" He asked reasonably. "What manner of man would leave their heir unprepared? I left you a winning hand; of this I am very certain." 

He had been certain then too, as he lay on his brother's lap dying, shrunken and mad; all that remained of his Aletheia had been his eyes, brighter than forge's metal or star's lode. 

_Only keep faith_ , he had told me.

* * *

"It delights me to see you enjoying the chase," Atarinkë told me, as we hunted together.

We had hunted partridges, lazy, waddling birds that they were. The eaglet liked partridges.

I was terrible at hunting, unlike Irissë who could land a buck at a hundred yards. In my youth, I had attempted to outdo her. She and I had no rivalry between us left. 

"These are fat birds that want to be eaten," I told Atarinkë. "What chase do you refer to?"

It was the first time I had gone hunting alone with one of my cousins. It could only have been Atarinkë, who had incessantly and annoyingly mothered us all after Nolofinwë's death. He had considered himself the mature one, because he had wed and had sired a son, while the rest of us had been wastrels. He had been drawn to Turkáno, because Turkáno had maturity enough to appease him.

"I meant the merry chase you lead Findekáno on," Atarinkë said solemnly. "You married that woodland prince out of desperation. If you must wed again, let your consort chase you first." 

Atarinkë had outdated and quaint notions on how to court and be courted. Perhaps his ancient methodologies had worked on Turkáno. It would be exactly the sort of nonsense Turkáno found romantic. 

"I shan't wed again."

"Tyelko and Irissë have," he reminded me. 

Irissë and I had once promised each other that we would take dozens of lovers and be replete, without wedding any of them. We had been inspired by Nolofinwë's example.

Neither of us realized then that we were not as Nolofinwë. Willingly, she had taken only Tyelko to bed. Willingly, I had taken only Macalaurë, Celeborn, and Théoden of Rohan to mine. We had more in common with Fëanáro than with Nolofinwë, when it came to this. Our hearts had been given before our bodies, always. 

"Findekáno took so many lovers," I said, worried. In my latter days, I craved constancy. 

"He slept with nameless many," Atarinkë said, and the judgement in his voice, while mild, remained present. "I doubt he cared for a single one."

Ereinion had been misbegotten, a boy that Findekáno had wanted nothing to do with, birthed of a woman who had discarded the child for want of resources.  
  
It was not the nameless many that I feared truly. 

"I wish he could stop loving Russandol," I said softly. 

"Nobody could have done for my brother what our cousin did, Artanis. He needed an anchor drawn in blood and bruise. His surrender was his trust. However can Findekáno forget what they were to each other then?"

His surrender was his trust. Had I not sworn to protect him once, when he had surrendered to me? How could I expect Findekáno to be unmoved? 

Atarinkë sighed and patted my back, comforting. I did not flinch. 

"I mourn my wife. Turkáno grieves for his wife. How we love each other is not as we loved our wives. New loves need not eradicate the old to be hallowed."

I hummed thoughtfully. Had Celeborn and I not loved, desperately, despite all that had happened? 

"Besides, it is hardly as if Macalaurë shall allow the least of hope," Atarinkë continued merrily. "His possessiveness outstrips all."

"Oh, I know," I muttered. 

Russandol's skin was often littered by marks of teeth and nail. If I did not know how my silly cousin liked to be mauled about, I would have told off Macalaurë for his rabid claim.

* * *

> "Now is the time for our esteemed Mr. Baggins, who has proved himself a good companion on our long road, and a hobbit full of courage and resource far exceeding his size, and if I may say so possessed of good luck far exceeding the usual allowance-now is the time for him to perform the service for which he was included in our Company; now is the time for him to earn his Reward."

"He had already got them out of two messes! Had he not earned his reward twice over?" My cousin exclaimed. "Poor Bilbo!"

"Well, the most that can be said for the dwarves is this: they intended to pay Bilbo really handsomely for his services; they had brought him to do a nasty job for them, and they did not mind the poor little fellow doing it if he would; but they would all have done their best to get him out of trouble, if he got into any."

"Thus fell to him what his betters spurned," Russandol lamented, utterly aggrieved on Bilbo's behalf.

Perhaps Gandalf had liked his Hobbits of Bag End because they had reminded him of another. 

"Is it Gandalf that you love the best in our valiant hobbit's tale?"

"Yes," he said, without hesitation. 

"And no love for poor Thorin?"

"None!" He exclaimed. "Wretched man! I hope the goblins eat him."

"You sound as Macalaurë."

"Cohabitation and its consequences," he said cheerily. 

"He has not left your quarters since you invited him in, has he?"

"No, not unless he is on a hunt, or working to compose, or away with Findaráto in one of the villages, or visiting Húrin." Russandol sighed. "I cannot remember, but I think I can assert with confidence that this is not the first time he has encroached on my territory and refused to leave." 

"He bit your mother when she combed your hair," I said, laughing. 

"He is an excellent lover," Russandol said. "I shall make allowances for the rest."

Macalaurë was an excellent lover, generous and single-minded in his pursuit of another's pleasure. I suppressed a grin. 

"It is poor form to insinuate that you slept with him before I did," he remarked, seeing clearly. 

Past cause and consequence, past layers of facades, there remained the truth, if only one could see clearly. This the Maiar called _Aletheia_. 

"I slept with him when he was noble. You slept with him when he has turned a barbarian," I jested. 

"I prefer barbarians," he retorted, content and peaceful, wielding the truth kindly upon himself without shame or fear. 

* * *

"What are you doing with Macalaurë on your trips to the villages?"

"Merely an excursion with my favorite cousin!" Findaráto insisted. 

I had chased him down to his chambers, and kicked his lovers out. They had left without squabble. They must be used to hasty dismissals. 

"I hope you are not paying them."

"No, they come here drawn to my magnificence," he said brightly, feeding me cherries. 

I did not dare think why he had an assortment of peaches and cherries in his quarters. He loathed both fruits. Russandol had complained that Findaráto was harrying him to can more apricot jam. Findaráto hated jam.

"Tell me why Macalaurë has developed an abrupt interest in the ways of the villagefolk," I pressed. 

"He has changed," Findaráto said simply. "He began to take an interest in how others lived and dwelt, during his long wanderings on Middle Earth. Is it difficult to fathom that even he must have changed, in his loneliness?"

Macalaurë had become more affectionate than he had once been. His world, then narrowed to only his brother's welfare, had expanded now to include our family without reserve. While once he had served as the nexus of us, for Russandol's sake, now he took genuine interest in our family without any selfish motive at play.

He had also found in him a hitherto unseen tolerance. 

"He visits Húrin," I remarked. 

"Everybody visits Húrin. Húrin is delightful."

"Macalaurë forgave him for touching Russandol." 

"I am fairly sure that Russandol seduced Húrin, Artanis. He has never resisted a valiant that hearkened to him." 

"Macalaurë has become more sophisticated in their lovemaking, I heard." 

"Good for Russandol. He does wither away so when he is not served cock and love on the daily," Findaráto said sweetly. 

I scowled at my innocent seeming brother. 

"Are you taking Macalaurë to orgies in the villages?" 

"Of course not!" Findaráto said, wounded. 

Macalaurë would fare terribly in an orgy. I set aside that ridiculous idea.

"He likes to see the village folk sing and dance," Findaráto explained. "There is no prurient tale, Artanis. It is only a change of nature. Macalaurë's newfound skills, I am afraid, are to be blamed on his imagination. He has never lacked for it, though admittedly this is the first time he is applying it to sexual gratification." 

I decided to let it be. 

"Findekáno came to me asking what sweetmeats you like best."

"Tell him nothing."

"Oh, Artanis, he means well."

"They all do, in the beginning." 

"I told you not to marry Celeborn!" 

"I am quite glad I married Celeborn!"

"These woodland cavedevils, they are all the same! Utterly magnificent and in dire need of buggery."

I laughed at his wit and settled beside him on his chaise. He raised his eyebrows, pleasantly surprised, before wrapping an arm about me. 

"Celeborn grew to like buggery by the end," I confided. 

"Ah, there you go. You should have married Oropher."

"I would have been dreadfully bored."

"I can see that. Elu was never boring."

He sighed. 

"Does it soothe you, to run from orgy to orgy?"

"It occupies me," he replied.

* * *

> "No thank you, O Smaug the Tremendous!" he replied. "I did not come for presents. I only wished to have a look at you and see if you were truly as great as tales say. I did not believe them."
> 
> "Do you now?" said the dragon somewhat flattered, even though he did not believe a word of it.
> 
> "Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities," replied Bilbo.
> 
> "You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon. 

  
"Oh dear, he must have been quaking in his boots then!" 

"Hobbits wear no boots, cousin." 

"He must have been quaking to the tips of his hairy toes," he amended. 

Had he trembled before Morgoth when he had been captured and taken to him? Had he knelt before his captors, begging them in vain to spare him, broken by cruelties? 

I had never begged. I hoped that neither had he. 

Macalaurë had once confided in me that Russandol had easily succumbed whenever children had been imperiled. He had always been weak for children. 

He had asked to see Celebrian so many times, in vain. Celeborn had not allowed it. 

"No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it. So Bilbo riddled Smaug, leaving him curious and enthralled."

"Bilbo was quite the clever burglar, wasn't he? He hoodwinked the dragon with flattery and riddles."

One hoodwinks the Gods with fool's gold. He had walked under the flag of parley to Morgoth, giving himself up, stealing from the God secrets and power. Veiled in conjuration, he had returned to us. 

Gandalf had been one of our kind more than one of his own, our Elf with a Wand. 

"Bard the Bowman was a mighty man, though one that sought no reward for his valor. How noble! He reminds me of Húrin."

"Well, I am certain that you would have gladly bedded him if you had known him," I teased my silly cousin who carried in his heart enduring love for his noble valiants. 

"Macalaurë shan't allow me such leeway, Artanis. I shall be chastened and locked away."

Oh, Macalaurë would allow him everything, if only it drew forth his smiles. 

"You enjoy being chastened by Macalaurë," I said lightly. 

"I enjoy him," he corrected me. "The chastening is merely an unlooked for benefit."

* * *

"Gandalf was his lover," I told Turkáno, as we worked together in the spring's evening by the river. 

Our parchments were full of scribbles, of his elegant cursive and my efficient shorthand. This tale of ours, epic and arduous, was coming to an end. 

"I am not surprised. He spent weeks in Valmar whenever he could," Turkáno muttered.

"Gandalf had been his teacher."

"When has Russandol minded a taboo or two?" 

Celeborn had minded, a great deal indeed, when Thranduil had taken his consort to bed before wedding her. 

These rules and conventions serve none, I had told my husband, baffled by his outrage. 

_Galadriel, these rules, as silly as they are, tell us that we are safe to practice rituals of society._

He clung to rites and rituals, because they reminded him we were not nomads fleeing hither and thither seeking safety, as times had once been for Elu's people before the arrival of Melian. 

* * *

> "So grim had Thorin become, that even if they had wished, the others would not have dared to find fault with him; but indeed most of them seemed to share his mind-except perhaps old fat Bombur and Fili and Kili. Bilbo, of course, disapproved of the whole turn of affairs. He had by now had more than enough of the Mountain, and being besieged inside it was not at all to his taste."

"Poor Bilbo! Why must he suffer and endure the folly of a madman?" 

We had suffered for Fëanáro's follies. 

We had suffered for Telpë's follies, when he had taught Sauron to make the One Ring.

"And why cannot his kinsmen speak against him?"

My father had spoken against Fëanáro's madness. Many had. 

Ereinion and Celeborn had spoken against Telpë's follies. Many had.

In the end, the ships had burned, and I had watched my father's retreat, and Nolofinwë had held me on the Ice. 

In the end, Telpë had fallen in Eregion and Ereinion had fallen in Mordor, and I had found myself alone.

"One of us should speak to Telpë," I said reluctantly. "He is in anguish, as he mulls over old sorrows." 

"He wears guilt," Russandol said. "It is not our place to tell him to cease." 

Oh, but it was. Telpë had looked to us, always, for counsel, for lighting his way. Now I was clinging to my bubble of relative contentment, and Russandol remembered nothing of what he had once been to our nephew. Devoid of our intervention, Telpë spiraled. Ereinion was attempting to soothe his grief, to little effect. 

"Cousin-"

"Peace, Artanis." He kissed my brow. "He must find his way." 

"Will he?"

"We have won him eden. What he does now is his choice to make."

* * *

"Married life suits you," I told Irissë, as she combed my hair. 

"He promised to give me a child," she whispered, uncertain and frightened.

"Good," I said steadily. "Onwards. Ever onwards." 

I invited myself to Findekáno's bed that night. He was shocked to see me, but he let me have of him what I chose. 

When I woke in the morning by his side, content and quiet, I realized that I was afraid no more.

"Artanis," he said quietly, watching me as if I might shatter if he dared touch. 

The names that mean us the best. My husband had named me Galadriel. I had lived in loneliness carrying another's cause, as a creature with a name that she knew not the worth of. 

In our courtyard, white roses bloomed and the morning breeze was laden in sweet fragrance. 

That childish craven wish for constancy in love returned once more to me, as fire sparking in our uncle's forge.

This was Findekáno. This was my cousin who had walked to Angband with a harp. This was my cousin who had held me on the Ice. His constant heart the world had known in lore and song. 

"What shall you allow me, cousin?" I asked Findekáno.

"What shan't I allow you?" he queried, laughing, tender and careworn and _mine_.

* * *

> "I am merely trying to avoid trouble for all concerned. Now I will make you an offer!"
> 
> "Let us hear it!" they said.
> 
> "You may see it!" said Bilbo. "It is this!" and he drew forth the Arkenstone, and threw away the wrapping. "This is the Arkenstone of Thrain," said he, "the Heart of the Mountain; and it is also the heart of Thorin. He values it above a river of gold. I give it to you. It will aid you in your bargaining." 

"What a foolish, selfless hobbit! Thorin might have harmed him for it!" Russandol exclaimed, on tenterhooks, as the story picked up pace and peril. "How could he barter away his claim of the treasure so easily, for the sake of another that cared neither for his welfare nor for his safety?"

"Perhaps he thought that avoiding bloodshed was paramount?" I suggested, amused by his outrage on Bilbo's behalf. 

He hummed and shucked oysters for me. 

It was a warm day, and I lounged about on a fat rock in my chemise. He had been diving for oysters. Flushed from exertion, he smelled of sweat and river's salt and sweet hyssops and petrichor. 

This had become our way. By the river, underneath cedars, upon round rocks, we whiled away our afternoons as lizards might, lost to a hobbit's tale. He would dive for oysters, to feed me, and then let me feed him too, unselfconscious and oblivious.

"Findaráto is running out of men," I commented. 

"What say you to setting him up with our Ereinion?" Russandol asked me eagerly, seeking my opinion. 

It could work. Findaráto had preferred his Kings prudish and loving. Ereinion was the greatest prude that had drawn breath, and he loved fiercely. Were he occupied in carnality, he might cease salting my fish.

It could work. I did not care right then. My mind was focused on another truth.

"You think me your equal now," I whispered. 

"Weren't you always?" He wondered. "Why would I leave my war to you otherwise?" 

"I was not your equal. I am not your equal." 

"Nonsense. You were. You are. And I must have known then as I know now."

"You remember nothing." 

I had to look away from the fierce conviction in his eyes. We had once compared them to stars and metals. Grey flitted the color of power. 

"Knowing is not memory, Artanis." 

I said nothing, frightened by the import of his words. How foolish to deem him powerless. Seated upon a rock, nude and shucking oysters for me, the power he wore was his own. 

In lethe, he remained aletheia.

His words were grace I had not known to look for. All my life, I had yearned to matter. I had yearned to be seen. I had yearned to be trusted.

Under these skies of no god's make, I found out that he had always seen in me his equal. 

"Name our world," he commanded.

There were words and there were acts. He knew me well, that I hearkened to the act more than to the word. This, then, was his covenant; surrendering to me the naming of the world. 

We had once looked to the east. Our fathers had promised us vengeance and conquest. We had then looked to the west, as exiles frightened and graceless. 

What was our world, this brave and new world that was hewn of ichor and soul and will? 

Against our grey-painted skies, upon a rock by a river that raised fields of clover and hyssop on its banks, I spoke faith's vesper once more. 

"Occident," I named this soul-spun eden of ours. 

* * *

And that night, as I danced in Findekáno's arms, I did not flinch once. 

"Spending time with our cousin has eased your grief," he said softly, holding me close. 

"I know now the measure of grace," I replied. 

"My adamant Artanis," he breathed. 

* * *

> "So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!" said Bilbo, and he turned his back on his adventure. The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Baggins was daily getting stronger. "I wish now only to be in my own arm-chair!" he said. 

"I am glad that he found his way home," Russandol said softly, as we lay by the river, under the arms of an ageless cypress. 

"I am glad too," I replied. 

He had found his way home to us, ruthless despite his heart that had braved every fate.

* * *

"He who deserves," Húrin said thoughtfully. "Many of the lessons that our lore masters taught us were rooted in the concepts of worth and deserving. Great trials and tribulations would make one worthy. Virtue and sacrifice made one deserving."

"That seems a framework ripe for exploitation," Russandol remarked, from where he was toiling over Húrin's stove cooking veal in wine. 

"No potatoes!" I called to him. He winked at me and returned to his culinary exploits. The aroma of cooking meat was a comforting one. It had always reminded me of home, of hunts under the open skies and bonfires. 

"Whatever have you against these deserving tubers?" Húrin asked, laughing.

"What trials and tribulations, virtue and sacrifice, have your tubers accomplished?" I demanded. 

"Potatoes were _currency_ in parts of Hithlum, Artanis!" Húrin exclaimed, outraged on behalf of his favorite tubers. 

"You sound like a hobbit," Russandol cut in. 

"What is a hobbit?" Húrin asked. "Artanis, have you been hoodwinking him with tales of made-up beasts again?"

"It was only the once!"

The boojum had been one of my better ideas, even if Húrin disagreed. Russandol was still unconvinced that it had not existed once. He had become rather invested in its mythos. 

"What is a hobbit, you ask?" Russandol began, with relish, as he served us rich veal and wine.

"What is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be at in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it)." 

"Deep fruity laughs?" Húrin wondered. "You might as well be describing Lord Finrod." 

"Findaráto is secretly a hobbit," I concurred sagely.

Did hobbits have orgies? They must. They had pipeweed, after all. One followed the other. 

"What is a Gandalf then?" Húrin demanded, none too convinced of the existence of hobbit folk.

"The first of my lovers! He is Wise, this friend of hobbits." 

"All of your lovers were Wise and Valiant," Húrin said laughing, holding no resentment. I wished I could be as him. I sufficed as I was, I knew, and found my contentment in it.

I had named our world. 

"You said the framework of worth is rife to be exploited." I brought up something I had been mulling over. 

"Oh, yes! When we measure ourselves in terms of worth, in terms of deserving, we turn desperate. In our desperation to prove ourselves to another, there is no high or low that we shall evade. It seems a tragic cycle that shall only cause harm to the disadvantaged."

"You said wives are worth as much as their husbands, that orphans and bastards are worth as much as the claimed," Húrin reminisced. "When you sat in the court of Himring and heard your petitioners, you ruled with fairness that I did not understand then. When I sat in my court, years later, I came to be called Wise."

Celeborn had called my ways ill-informed. I had called them progressive. In the end, lore had called me Wise.

"They know you only as a madman," Húrin said ruefully. 

Húrin and I, our family, our closest allies and our fiercest foes, had at least an inkling of what my cousin had been. Did that suffice? It would not have sufficed for me. I would have wanted the world to know what I had done. I wished that they knew what he had done. Perhaps Gandalf and Elrond could finally write of him as he was, instead of how we had cast him as. 

"The beams of our house are of cedar and rafters of fir. That wretched prince under the sunset arch of another heaven had wanted nothing more. He had wanted nothing else. He knew that healing is not undoing of the harm."

Findaráto walked alone and Irissë waited by a lake. Húrin was the only one of his kind. Fëanáro mourned his father. 

Gandalf was a pilgrim, widowed. My father lingered childless. Celeborn, I could not bear to think of.

Healing is not undoing of the harm. 

"You have your eden," Húrin said softly, exhausted, sorrowed, and yet smiling without resentment. 

"I have you," Russandol corrected, unflinchingly tender and affectionate as he beheld us. "I was not one of the Valar. I was not one of the Maiar. That we are here, that we are safe, is against all odds."

He had been altogether ordinary. He had not his brother's golden song. He had not his father's craft. He had not his grandmother's foresight. The crown had left him dispossessed. The oath had turned him loathed. He had been renowned among our people once for his _comeliness_. And that had fled him long before the end. Hated, helpless, half-alive, he had endured. A prisoner of conscience, Melian had called him.

Húrin must have been thinking of the same, because he said, "Thief or beggar or prince or prophet, you sufficed. Aure Entuluva, you promised us, and here we are."

Our faith had shattered Gods.

At my feet, dreams had unravelled to dust. 

In the Void, cold and white had been mercy's kiss. Varda's stars had fallen from her as tears. 

What did it matter that only a handful knew of my cousin's truths? He had his eden, will-wrought. 

"To creatures of clay that kept faith!" Húrin said happily. 

"To the Wise!" Russandol toasted Húrin and me. 

Húrin looked to me, encouraging. He had always seen sharply through my grappling with inadequacy. 

All my life I had wanted to matter to someone, driven by complex and subconscious fears that had settled in after my father had left me on the Ice. I had craved constancy and found it not within in my reach. I had craved love unconditional and found it elusive to me. So I had turned to purpose. If I could not be love, let me be justice. 

_Wise_ , they had called me then.

I was discontented even so, for I wondered why so many had loved my cousin despite his inevitabilities and inadequacies of the heart. Húrin had saved him on plains of blood. Findekáno had walked to hell with a harp. Sauron had held breath to flesh on crags. Gandalf had wandered a grey pilgrim that saved Middle Earth. Círdan had been the succor of our family, through doom and bitter bane. Elerrína's sacrifice was threaded in our victory as chiasmus. Macalaurë had unflinchingly become a madman's last deity. My grudges had been one-sided. He had trusted me with his war. He had trusted me to hold him to life. In Barad Eithel, he had let me see him, in obscene vulnerability. Surrender was the only absolute trust he knew, and he had given me that freely. I had loved him afterwards. 

"To foot-rot!" I said truthfully. 

"Artanis, I thought we were compatriots!" he exclaimed, with faux disappointment. 

Húrin's hand on my wrist was warm and grounding. I swallowed. I need not hide any more. What had I to fear? I was enough. 

"To you, my measure of grace." 

My hand trembled when I lifted my goblet.

"Artanis-"

His voice was hoarse, overwhelmed. 

I was a fool. I was a bloody fool. He had wanted my acknowledgement as badly as I had wanted his. Lost to my fears, I had not seen his. 

The next thing I knew, I was in his arms and he had lifted me off my feet. 

"Stop that!" I demanded, breathless, and cupped his dear features. 

"If you break my dishes, it shall be potatoes next time!" Húrin warned us, though his twinkling eyes gave him away.

He sung for us one of Gondolin's songs, of spring and wildflowers. 

Giddy, we waltzed, under his humble roof, clumsy and laughing and stumbling, somehow managing not to shatter his dishes or goblets. 

Flushed and happy, I looked up at my cousin. There were tears sheening his eyes. 

"No more," I commanded him. "I have you." 

"As you wish," he vowed, grinning crooked, charmingly helpless to hide how my acknowledgement gladdened him. 

I had named this world. 

On Occident we danced.

* * *

When Findekáno saw that I had moved into his quarters, he laughed and welcomed me warmly. 

_Make your home in me_ , he offered, arms akimbo, waiting for my whims and wishes, surrendered to my mercy,

I gladly loved him. 

Under the arch of another heaven, I finally knew the constancy I had craved. 

* * *

> "Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!" said Bilbo.
> 
> "Of course!" said Gandalf. "And why should not they prove true?"
> 
> "Thank goodness!" said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

  
"Thank goodness!" echoed Russandol, as he shucked oysters for me. "I salute prophets and burglars!"

Most said he had inherited his foresight from Míriel, his grandmother. I had never learned what the make of Russandol's foresight had been. I had once speculated he had stolen it from Morgoth. At the end, as he lay dying, prophecies had spilled as bloodied flowers from his lips. 

Prophecies and foresight had been the gifts of Irmo, always. His gifts had come to Míriel and Melian, to Fëanáro and to me. 

"To prophets and burglars, indeed!" I told my cousin, delighting in how pleased he was by Bilbo's safe return home. 

_Godslayer, Fatebreaker, Revenant_ , they called us now, in awe and love. 

The only goodness we need be grateful for was our own. 

Even our oysters tasted of victory. 

Painted bright underneath Occident's skies, here ends our tale, drawn soft to its mellowed close. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

>   
> Sunset is maintained at a [Dreamwidth repository](https://the-song-of-sunset.dreamwidth.org). It is a set of stories that can be read as standalone or as a full alternate universe.


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